Date: 1790

"Men are caught indeed by the effusions of a brilliant fancy and bright imagination; but its refulgence and flashes, like the coruscations of the diamond, serve only to sparkle in the eye of the beholder, and to dazzle his sight, without further use or advantage to any one: whereas practical good...

— Moore, Charles (fl. 1785-90)

Date: 1790

"Shining parts, like the bright colourings of porcelain, or the lustres of glass in a well furnished house, are beautiful decorations and striking ornaments; but good sense, like the solid service of plate, is alone substantial and intrinsically valuable."

— Moore, Charles (fl. 1785-90)

Date: 1790

"A hungry pauper has just received a mess of pottage from the hands of benevolence; and two or three poor wretches, as hungry as himself, are craving part of it; but he is deaf to their solicitations, and steels his heart against their wants."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1790

"Vain are a man's titles--vain his wealth--vain his pursuits of pleasure--the guilty mind has no enjoyment--neither rank nor riches can steel the breast against the stings of conscience."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1790

"The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1790

"In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1790

"But while those ancient philosophers endeavoured in this manner to suggest every consideration which could, as Milton says, arm the obdured breast with stubborn patience, as with triple steel; they, at the same time, laboured above all to convince their followers that there neither was nor could...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: January 19, 1791

"He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against ...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: January 19, 1791

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1791

"I will venture to say, that in no writings whatever can be found more bark and steel for the mind, if I may use the expression; more that can brace and invigorate every manly and noble sentiment."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)