Date: 1774

"Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men; when his merit has received the stamp of their approbation, women make it current, that is to say, put him in fashion."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"The nymph, who in my bosom reigns, / With such full force my heart enchains, / That nothing ever can impair / The empire she possesses there."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1775

"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776, 1781, 1788-89

"At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoicks, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external, as things indifferent."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"Like most of the Africans, Severus was passionately addicted to the vain studies of magic and divination, deeply versed in the interpretation of dreams and omens, and perfectly acquainted with the science of judicial astrology; which, in almost every age except the present, has maintained its do...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"She maintained an absolute and lasting empire over the mind of her son, and in his affection the mother could not brook a rival"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776

"he more approaching to the testimony of our senses every philosophical solution is, the more perhaps is it conformable to nature."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1776, 1778

"If Peace hath fled the human kind, / With her the empire of the Mind, For bodies to contend"

— Stevenson, William (1730-1783)

Date: 1776

The ruling passion of an author may be "strongly marked in his writings"

— Mickle, William Julius [formerly William Meikle] (1734-1788)

Date: 1776

"Oh! jealousy, / Thou tyrant of the mind."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)