Date: 1760-7

"To conceive this right,--call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to your hand. --Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1763

"My tears streamed afresh when I beheld him, when I remembered the sweet hours we had passed together, the gay scenes which hope had painted to our hearts; I wept over the friend I had so loved, I pressed his cold hand to my lips."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1766

"If society be formed, by the communication of ideas and sentiments, speech, is, undoubtedly, its most essential and most graceful band, being, at once, the pencil of the mind, the image of its operations, and, the interpreter of the heart."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1766

"These three words denote, equally, an advantageous state, and agreeable situation; but that of happiness, marks, properly, the state of fortune, capable of dispensing pleasures, and placing them within our reach; that of felicity, expresses, particularly, the state of the heart; disposed to tast...

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1766

"'Love', designs on the imagination, the flattering idea of eternal happiness, in the entire and constant possession of the object we 'love'. 'Gallantry', fails not to paint there the agreeable image of a singular pleasure, in the enjoyment of the object we pursue; but, neither the one, nor, the ...

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1767, 1784

"Shall we, because we strive in vain to tell / How Matter acts on incorporeal Mind, / Or how, when sleep has lock'd up ev'ry sense, / Or fevers rage, Imagination paints / Unreal scenes, reject what sober sense, / And calmest thought attest?"

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1768

"The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened; reduce them to their proper size and hue she overlooks them."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1755, 1771

"For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)