Date: 1760, 1761

"Reason, collected in herself, disdains / The slavish yoke of arbitrary chains"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows head-strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion!"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But here the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;--is conscious of the web she has wove;--knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has plann'd before her."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as the Anima, or even the Animus, taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole, all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take advantage of any one spot of rising-ground to get astride of your imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to slip on,--let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to squirt it, to jump it, to rear it,...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1762-3

"Whatever unto them is brought / Is carried on the wings of thought / Before his throne, where, in full state, / He on their merits holds debate, / Examines, cross-examines, weighs / Their right to censure or to praise."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762

"Therefore, I have no one notion, / That is not form'd, like the designing / Of the peristaltick motion; / Vermicular; twisting and twining; / Going to work / Just like a bottle-skrew upon a cork."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)