Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"However, I found their conversation more vulgar than I could have expected from personages of such distinction: if these, thought I to myself, be Princes, they are the most stupid Princes I have ever conversed with: yet still I continued to venerate their dress; for dress has a kind of mechanica...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"We are not to be astonished, says Confucius, 'that the wise walk more slowly in their road to virtue, than fools in their passage to vice; since passion drags us along, while wisdom only points out the way.'"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"We should find her, if any sensible defect appeared in the mind, more careful in rectifying it, than plaistering up the irreparable decays of the person; nay, I am even apt to fancy, that ladies would find more real pleasure in this utensil in private, than in any other bauble imported from Chin...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"The first person who came up in order to view her intellectual face was a commoner's wife, who, as I afterwards found, being bred during her virginity in a pawn-broker's shop, now attempted to make up the defects of breeding and sentiment by the magnificence of her dress, and the expensiveness o...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Mr. Showman, cried she, approaching, I am told you has something to shew in that there sort of magic lanthorn, by which folks can see themselves on the inside; I protest, as my lord Beetle says, I am sure it will be vastly pretty, for I have never seen any thing like it before. But how; are we t...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: w. 1764, 1953

"My mind is like an air-pump which receives and ejects ideas with wonderful facility."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1765

"You saw what heart-religion meant [...] true religion is not a negative or an external thing; but the life of God in the soul of man; the image of God stamped upon the heart."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1765

"And in this I am warranted by the example of ancient Rome; where, as Cicero informs us, the very boys were obliged to learn the twelve tables by heart, as a carmen necessarium or indispensable lesson, to imprint on their tender minds an early knowledge of the laws and constitution of their count...

— Blackstone, William (1723-1780)

Date: 1766-1769, 1956

"Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family i...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)