Date: December 29, 1759

"In childhood, while our minds are yet unoccupied, religion is impressed upon them, and the first years of almost all who have been well educated are passed in a regular discharge of the duties of piety."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760

"Whene'er he visits us with Racks of Pain, / And speeds the rapid Fever in each Vein, / Our drossy Souls the potent Fire refines,/ Till the bright Ore in polish'd Beauty shines"

— Langhorne,William (1721-1772)

Date: 1760

"Dim burns the Lamp of Life; this Breast heaves slow; / My Soul shall soon the last sad Journey go."

— Langhorne,William (1721-1772)

Date: 1760, 1761

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

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1760, 1761

"And Reason to herself alone is law."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1760

"With how quick a succession, do days, months and years pass over our heads? -- how truly like a shadow that departeth do they flee away insensibly, and scarce leave an impression with us?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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

"For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he had sustain'd from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully reckon'd upon in his mind, and register'd down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case Bobby should fail him."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"In short, he had so many little subjects of disquietude springing out of this one affair, all fretting successively in his mind as they rose up in it, that my mother, whatever was her journey up, had but an uneasy journey of it down."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)