Date: 1768

"Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seem'd only to be tuned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Maria, tho' not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms--affliction had touch'd her looks with something that was scarce earthly--still she was feminine--and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever wor...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw--and 'tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven--eternal fountain of our feelings!--'tis here I trace thee--and this is thy divinity which stirs within...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table; my heart was sat down the moment I enter'd the room; so I sat down at once like a son of the family."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: January 2, 1769

"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may gather somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1770, 1806

"Nor pride nor fickleness could claim / The empire of his mind."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1771

"As the Wax would not be adequate to its business of Signature, had it not a Power to retain, as well as to receive; the same holds of the SOUL, with respect to Sense and Imagination."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"The growth of knowledge" resembles "the growth of fruit," as it is "the internal vigour, and virtue of the tree that must ripen the juices to their just maturity"

— Harris, James (1709-1780)