Date: 1775

"Yet--yet--perhaps your high respect alone for this solemn compact has fettered your inclinations, which else had made worthier choice."

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

"I'll wait till her just resentment is abated--and when I distress her so again, may I lose her for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose knawing passions, and long-hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half the day, and all the night!"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

Women, "like garden-trees," seldom show fruit, "till time has robbed them of the more specious blossom"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

One may be so distressed as to be given "hydrostatics"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

The thunder of words may sour the "milk of human kindness" in the breast

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

A new light may break in upon someone

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

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

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775

"That heart, by war and honour steel'd to fear, / Droops on a sigh, and sickens at a tear!"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

Date: February 24, 1777; 1781

"She is the deceitful sorceress who now holds your husband's heart in bondage."

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)