Date: 1760-7
"Could no such thing as favour and affection enter this sacred Court [of Conscience]:--Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;--or was asham'd to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment?"
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1762-3
The five senses may "Allow [Reason] to retain the name / Of Royalty, and, as in sport, / To hold a mimic formal court, / Permitted (no uncommon thing) / To be a kind of puppet-king, / And suffer'd, by the way of toy, / To hold a globe, but not employ"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1767, 1778
"Envy in courts and cottages will dwell, / Nay climb to heaven itself, tho' born in hell: / In every living bosom lurks this pest, / But reigns unrival'd in the human breast; / On reason's throne usurps a thorny part, / And plants a thousand daggers in the heart."
preview | full record— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)
Date: 1762-3
"With these grave fops, whose system seems / To give up certainty for dreams / The eye of man is understood / As for no other purpose good / Than as a door, through which, of course, / Their passage crowding objects force; / A downright usher, to admit / New-comers to the court of Wit."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1762-3
"(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen, / When I say wit, I wisdom mean) / Where, (such the practice of the court, / Which legal precedents support) / Not one idea is allow'd / To pass unquestion'd in the crowd, / But ere it can obtain the grace / Of holding in the brain a place, / Before the chief i...
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1797-8, 1799
"Consciousness of an inner court in the human being ('before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another') is conscience."
preview | full record— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)
Date: 1789, 1791, 1799
"Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, / Inexorable Conscience holds his court"
preview | full record— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Date: 1789, 1792
"The tops of these scarce veil'd the roots of those; / A winding court where wandering fancy walk'd / And to herself responsive Echo talk'd."
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: 1763
Love of fame may spur one to deeds of pith, "where courage, tried / In Reason's court, is amply justified."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1799
"The judge of our court of conscience is the noblest soul I ever knew"
preview | full record— Ludger, Conrad (b. 1748)