Date: 1768

"No man cares to have his virtues the sport of contingencies--or one man may be generous, as another man is puissant--'sed non, quo ad banc'--or be it as it may--for there is no regular reasoning upon the ebbs and flows of our humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for ought I know, which...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw--and 'tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven--eternal fountain of our feelings!--'tis here I trace thee--and this is thy divinity which stirs within...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

"[T]he generosity of the Dairo, instead of exciting the least emotion of gratitude in Taycho's own breast, acted only as a golden key to unlock all the sluices of his virulence and abuse."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"After a weak mind has been duly prepared, and turned as it were, by opening a sluice or torrent of high-sounding words, the greater the contradiction proposed the stronger impression it makes, because it increases the puzzle, and lays fast hold on the admiration; depositing the small proportion ...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1773

"Even the ceremonial of the world, shallow as it may appear, is not without its use; it may indeed take from the warmth of friendship, but it covers the coldness of indifference; and if it has repressed the genuine overflowings of kindness, it has smothered the turbulence of passion and animosity."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1773

"It was so with Annesly; his unsuspecting heart overflowed with gratitude towards this friend of his son, and he now grew lavish of his confidence towards him, in proportion as he recollected having once (in his present opinion unjustly) denied it."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1773

"I know not, said he, most lovely of women, whether I should venture to express the sensations of my heart at this moment; that respect which ever attends a love so sincere as mine, has hitherto kept me silent; but the late accident, in which all that I hold dear was endangered, has opened every ...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1773

"A gush of tenderness swelled her heart at the sight--She burst into tears--But the crisis of her fate was come--and she entered the carriage, which drove off at a furious rate, Camplin commanding the postilion to make as much speed as was possible."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"His repeated promises confirm her hopes; his fondness encreases her passion; her whole soul is lost and drowned in pleasure; her heart is all rapture: At length she stretches out her arms to embrace the object of her vows--All is vanished away; her lover forsakes her."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)