Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1751

"Nothing of body, when friend writes to friend; the mind impelling sovereignly the vassal-fingers."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1755

"[I]n short, it is very well attested, that he had one mistress, whom he inthroned, as sovereign of his heart, and to whom he recommended himself with great caution and privacy, because he piqued himself upon being a secret knight."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

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: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

"I believe it would not be amiss, that he should have a Taste of Poetry, altho' perhaps it were not to be wish'd he had such strong Inclinations that way, as to make that lively and delectable Amusement his predominant Passion."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

"Our Passions gone, and Reason in her Throne / Amaz'd, we see the Mischiefs we have done."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

Mr B. is "a young Gentleman of violent and lawless Passions"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741

"But if otherwise, he may take Advantage of the Confidence plac'd in him, to the Injury of some worthy Person, and by Degrees monopolize the young Gentleman to himself, and govern his Passions as absolurely, as I have heard some First Ministers have done those of their Prince"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)