Date: 1742

"O treacherous Conscience! while she seems to sleep / On rose and myrtle, lull'd with siren song; / While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop / On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein, / And give us up to licence, unrecall'd, / Unmark'd,---see, from behind her secret stand, / The sly info...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

"We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile: / The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. / Our quick-returning folly cancels all; / As the tide rushing rases what is writ / In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Read and revere the sacred page; a page / Where triumphs Immortality; a page / Which not the whole creation could produce; / Which not the conflagration shall destroy; / In Nature's ruins not one letter lost: / 'Tis printed in the minds of gods for ever."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"What wealth in senses such as these! What wealth / In Fancy fired to form a fairer scene / Than Sense surveys! in Memory's firm record!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"That medling Ape Imitation, as soon as we come to years of Indiscretion (so let me speak), snatches the Pen, and blots out nature's mark of Separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental Individuality"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"All these particulars, I say, consider'd, why should it seem altogether impossible, that heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct, and fair."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1779

"Come, come, Albina; / Though to a Lover you might wear this guise, / Of coy reserve, yet, to a Father's eye, / Your mind should now appear as legible / As in the days of prattling infancy."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1779

"Why stand'st thou thus, with such exploring eyes, / As if thou'dst read the workings of my brain?"

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1780

"In prayer she was employ'd; which instant taught me / That piety must be the bait to snare her, / --So won her confidence, and read her heart."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1782

"Oh! lads, beware the month of May;--for you blest girls--nature decked out--as in a birth-day suit--courts you with all its sweets--where-e'er you tread--the grass and wanton flowerets fondly kiss your feet--and humbly bow their pretty heads--to the gentle sweepings of your under-petticoats--the...

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)