Date: 1760-7

"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Yet I say, was Yorick never once in any one domicile of Phutatorius's brain--but the true cause of his exclamation lay at least a yard below."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"This was the master-key to her behaviour, and once I had got it, which I soon did, it was easy to unlock her breast."

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: January 1, 1760 - January 1, 1762; 1762

A sacred idea may be throned within the heart and "cherished with such fervency of regard, with such reverence of affection, as the devout anchorite more unreasonably pays to those sainted reliques that constitute the object of his adoration"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"No, Isabella, said the princess, I should not deserve this incomparable parent, if the inmost recesses of my soul harboured a thought without her permission."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1766

"Would you have me tamely sit down and flatter our infamous betrayer; and to avoid a prison continually suffer the more galling bonds of mental confinement! No, never. If we are to be taken from this abode, only let us hold to the right, and wherever we are thrown, we can still retire to a charmi...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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: 1770-1

"The method that Mrs. Ruby-nose used to dismiss her anger, was to clap herself into an arm-chair with such a whang, that it shook the hot vapours from her brain, and sent them in a hurry down into a capacious store-room called her victualling-office."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1770-1

"By this time the choleric vapours, which madam had jogged downwards when she let her broad bottom salute the chair with such a whack, growing warm amongst the hodg-potch they found in her store-room, which we may properly stile a hot-house, began to ascend, and take possession of their former te...

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1771

"[T]he passions of men are temporary madhouses; and sometimes very fatal in their effects"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)