Date: 1760-7

"Conscience looks into the Statutes at Large;--finds no express law broken by what he has done;--perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels incurred;--sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his gates upon him:--What is there to affright his conscience?--Conscience h...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Thus conscience, this once able monitor, --placed on high as a judge within us, and intended by our Maker as a just and equitable one too,--by an unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect cognizance of what passes,--does its office so negligently,--sometimes so corruptl...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"And, in your own case, remember this plain distinction, a mistake in which has ruined thousands,--that your conscience is not a law."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"No, God and reason made the law, and have placed conscience within you to determine;--not like an Asiatic Cadi, according to the ebbs and flows of his own passions,--but like a British judge in this land of liberty and good sense, who makes no new law, but faithfully declares that law which he k...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"However, as he knew not what the true cause might turn out, he deemed it most prudent, in the situation he was in at present, to bear it, if possible, like a stoick; which, with the help of some wry faces and compursions of the mouth, he had certainly accomplished, had his imagination continued ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

One may sacrifice an over-ruling passion to the sober calls of reason and humanity

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1761

"I hope 'tis nothing but her extreme sensibility, and that after those first violent struggles are over, reason and discretion will reassume their empire."

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1761

"We are indeed so much used to what they call poetical justice, that we are disappointed in the catastrophe of a fable, if every body concerned in it be not disposed of according to the sentence of that judge which we have set up in our own breasts"

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1761

"I have been a slave to a hopeless passion too long; I am now resolved to struggle with my chains: you, Madam, must assist me in breaking them intirely; and I make no doubt but that time, joined to my own efforts, and aided by your sweetness of disposition, your tenderness, and admirable sense, w...

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)