Date: 1768

"The deep Philsopher who turns mankind / Quite inside outwards, and dissects the mind, / Wou'd look but whimsical and strangely out, / To grudge some Quack his treatise on the gout."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1769

One may gain "absolute empire over the mind" of another

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"[T]he generosity of the Dairo, instead of exciting the least emotion of gratitude in Taycho's own breast, acted only as a golden key to unlock all the sluices of his virulence and abuse."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"After a weak mind has been duly prepared, and turned as it were, by opening a sluice or torrent of high-sounding words, the greater the contradiction proposed the stronger impression it makes, because it increases the puzzle, and lays fast hold on the admiration; depositing the small proportion ...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"He knew when to distract its weak brain with a tumult of incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of words without any ideas annexed. These throng in like city-milliners to a Mile-end assembly, while it happens to be u...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"I can assure thee, Peacock, that Richard was a prince of a very agreeable aspect, and excelled in every personal accomplishment; neither was his heart a stranger to the softer passions of tenderness and pity"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"Pox on their philosophy! Instead of demonstrating the immortality of the soul, they have plainly proved the soul is a chimæra, a will o' the wisp, a bubble, a term, a word, a nothing!"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"But, first, I'll tell thee thy detested deeds, / And gall, if possible, thine iron heart."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1769

"But conscious that a mind by virtue steel'd, / To no impression of distress will yield."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)