Date: 1760-7

"To conceive this right,--call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to your hand. --Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"My imagination painted her in all the bloom of youth and beauty. I fancied her attended by the loves and graces, and I set out with the most pleasing expectations of seeing the conquest I had made."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1766

"My fancy draws that harmless groupe as listening to every line of this with great composure."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1768

"The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened; reduce them to their proper size and hue she overlooks them."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1770

"Imagination fondly stoops to trace / The parlour splendours of that festive place."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1775

"[B]e assured I throw the original from my heart as easily!"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1788

"Worlds would I give now for that sketch of my Quintin, that my cruel brother deprived me of; but his dear image is engraven on my heart"

— O'Keeffe, John (1747-1833)