Date: 1691

"She was the paragon of Perfection, and Loadstar of all Eyes and Hearts; and well might my Dear Father Travel seven years after her Death, before he Marryed agen, for had he don't, not seven, nor seventeen, nor seventy, but seven hundred, he'd ne're have lit upon such another."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"No--my purest pure had such a Soul, it shin'd through her Body, and such a Body, you might see her Soul through't. Which some may think much at one, but however there's a differeut conception in't, and it makes one line more to fill out the Book."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]nd what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch logician or commentator."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment are two luminaries and "their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"And is all this to be lighted up in the heart for a beggarly account of three or four louisd'ors, which is the most I can be overreach'd in?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I got my dinner; and after I had enlightened my mind with a bottle of Burgundy, I at it again--and after two or three hours pouring upon it, with almost as deep attention as ever Gruter or Jacob Spon did upon a nonsensical inscription, I thought I made sense of it."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)