Date: 1766

"Perhaps I may catch up even one from the gulph, and that will be great gain; for is there upon earth a gem so precious as the human soul?"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"Their insensibility excited my highest compassion, and blotted my own uneasiness a while from my mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"We should then find that creatures, whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hand of a refiner; we should then find that wretches, now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of danger."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"Love laugh'd, and, sure of conquest, wing'd a dart / Unerring, to her undefended heart."

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1766

"To stamp Fraternity on gen'rous hearts: [...] Celestial Charity to-night descends"

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1766

"I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that the lessons of wisdom have never such a power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1766

"Fancy leads the fetter'd senses / Captives to her fond controul; / Merit may have rich pretences, / But 'tis Fancy fires the soul."

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1766

"Far beyond the bonds of meaning / Fancy flies, a Fairy queen!"

— Cunningham, John (1729-1773)

Date: 1767

"Man in this world, Sir, may be compared to a hackney-coach upon a stand; continually subject to be drawn by his unruly appetites, on one foolish jaunt or another; but you will say, if his appetites are horses, which as it were drag him along, reason is the coachman to rule those horses--But, Sir...

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1767

"[I]ndeed, in her more serious moments, which are but few, she, perhaps, gives me an hearing, when all at once a crowd of gayer thoughts rush on, and kill at once the hopes wherewith I was elated a few minutes before"

— O'Keeffe, John (1747-1833)