Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent the joys of early love and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1762

"Your constant endeavours have been to inculcate the best principles into youthful minds, the only probable means of mending mankind; for the foundation of most of our virtues, or our vices, are laid in that season of life when we are most susceptible of impression, and when our minds, as on a sh...

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1762

"This scene had made too deep an impression on our minds, not to be the subject of our discourse all the way home."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1762

"He reverenced and respected her like a divinity, but hoped that prudence might enable him to conquer his passion, at the same time that it had not force enough to determine him to fly her presence, the only possible means of lessening the impression which every hour engraved more deeply on his h...

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1762

"Human nature cannot feel a deeper affliction than now overwhelmed Miss Melvyn; wherein Sir Charles bore as great a share, as the easiness of his nature was capable of;--but his heart was not susceptible, either of strong, or lasting impressions."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1769

"If my ideas of things are right, the human mind is naturally virtuous; the business of education is therefore less to give us good impressions, which we have from nature, than to guard us against bad ones, which are generally acquired."

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