Date: 1767, 1784

"This principle / In female minds a feebler empire holds, / Opposing less the specious arguments / For milder rule, and freedom's popular theme."

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1768

"When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she--you had reason--the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse th...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

"Do you think it possible, Lucy, for a Frenchwoman to love? is not vanity the ruling passion of their hearts?"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1769

We may blush at past follies and indiscretions "when the empire of reason begins"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1769

"For my part, I think no politics worth attending to but those of the little commonwealth of woman: if I can maintain my empire over hearts, I leave the men to quarrel for every thing else."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1769

"My voyage ought undoubtedly to be considered as an abdication: I am to all intents and purposes dead in law as a lover; and the lady has a right to consider her heart as vacant, and to proceed to a new election."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1769

Savages may regard "the Christian system of marriage as contrary to the laws of nature and reason"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1774

"I expect the incomparable fair one of Hamburg, that prodigy of beauty, and paragon of good sense, who has enslaved your mind, and inflamed your heart."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"Please the eyes and the ears, they will introduce you to the heart; and nine times in ten, the heart governs the understanding."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)