Date: 1760-7

"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Angels and Ministers of grace defend us! cried my father,--can any soul withstand this shock?--No wonder the intellectual web is so rent and tatter'd as we see it; and that so many of our best heads are no better than a puzzled skein of silk,--all perplexity,--all confusion within side."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"It wonderfully explain'd and accounted for the acumen of the Asiatic genius, and that sprightlier turn, and a more penetrating intuition of minds, in warmer climates; not from the loose and common-place solution of a clearer sky, and a more perpetual sun-shine, &c.--which, for aught he knew, mig...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"With all my precautions, how was my system turned topside turvy in the womb with my child! his head exposed to the hand of violence, and a pressure of 470 pounds averdupois weight acting so perpendicularly upon its apex---that at this hour 'tis ninety per Cent. insurance, that the fine network o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I could not help looking for some time at him as I sat in the remise--the more I look'd at him, his croix, and his basket, the stronger they wove themselves into my brain."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1777

"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1785

"Threads of politic and shrewd design" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from "the puzzled skein"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: December 10, 1790; 1791

"When the Student has been habituated to this grand conception of the Art, when the relish for this stile is established, makes a part of himself, and is woven into his mind, he will, by this time, have got a power of selecting from whatever occurs in nature that is grand, and corresponds with th...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)