Date: 1774

"A parcel of warm hearts and inexperienced heads, heated by convivial mirth, and possibly a little too much wine, vow, and really mean at the time, eternal friendships to each other, and indiscreetly pour out their whole souls in common, and without the least reserve."

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

Date: 1776-1789

"The influence of a polite age and the labour of an attentive education had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1777

"For I never will believe that envy, though passed through all the moral strainers, can be refined into a virtuous emulation, or lying improved into an agreeable turn for innocent invention."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788-89

"But on the system of Plato, they differ as much as delusions and reality; for here the vital, permanent, and lucid nature of ideas is the fountain of science; and the inert, unstable, and obscure nature of sensible objects, the source of sensation."

— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)

Date: 1789

"A river may as soon be made to flow back to its fountain, as volitions can be exempted from the necessitating influence of motives."

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)

Date: 1789

"But if it means the mental energy preceding and producing volition, it is then plainly equivalent to the term motive, and the question is reduced to a mere verbal controversy; for this mental energy, denoting only a particular disposition and state of mind, must itself have resulted from a previ...

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)