Date: 1774

"Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"This weakness did not proceed from a bad heart, but was merely the effect of vanity, or an unbridled imagination."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1775

"What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul, / Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, / By Reason's light on Resolution's wings, / Spite of her frail / companion, dauntless goes / O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows? "

— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)

Date: 1775

"This is the true nature of the human mind; the greater evil always swallowing up the lesser, as the rod of Moses did the other serpents."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

"How like a wanton lamb that careless play'd, / The shepherd and the fold forgotten quite, / My vagrant soul, in search of vain delight, / Many long years from her true Shepherd stray'd!"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1775

"I'll wait till her just resentment is abated--and when I distress her so again, may I lose her for ever! and be linked instead to some antique virago, whose knawing passions, and long-hoarded spleen, shall make me curse my folly half the day, and all the night!"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1775, 1776

"'Let Meekness as a dove / 'Brood in man's heart the sacred acts of Love."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: w. 1772, 1776, 1810, 1825

"For, oh! my heart was light as ony bird that flew, / And, wae as a' thing was, it had a kindly hue."

— Barnard [née Lindsay], Lady Anne (1750-1825)

Date: 1777

"As it is the character of Genius to penetrate with a lynx's beam into unfathomable abysses and uncreated worlds, and to see what is not, so it is the property of good sense to distinguish perfectly, and judge accurately what really is."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1767, 1778

"Envy in courts and cottages will dwell, / Nay climb to heaven itself, tho' born in hell: / In every living bosom lurks this pest, / But reigns unrival'd in the human breast; / On reason's throne usurps a thorny part, / And plants a thousand daggers in the heart."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)