Date: 1760

"Oh, Sterne! thou art scabby, and such is the leprosy of thy mind that it is not to be cured like the leprosy of the body, by dipping nine times in the river Jordan."

— Whitefield, George (1714-1770)

Date: 1773

"[Y]et so much more is the understanding blinded, when once the fancy is captivated, that it seems a desperate undertaking to convince a girl in love that she has mistaken the character of the man she prefers."

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

Date: 1773

"The resentment which, instead of being expressed, is nursed in secret, and continually aggravated by the imagination, will, in time, become the ruling passion; and then, how horrible must be his case, whose kind and pleasurable affections are all swallowed up by the tormenting as well as detesta...

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

Date: w. 1774-6, 1921

"As to the brutes it [whipping] inflicts no wound on their mind, whose Natures seem made to bear it, and whose sufferings are not attended with shame or pain beyond the present moment."

— Schaw, Janet (c. 1731-c. 1801)

Date: 1774

"Many people lose a great deal of time by reading: for they read frivolous and idle books, such as the absurd romances of the two last centuries; where characters, that never existed, are insipidly displayed, and sentiments that were never felt, pompously described: the Oriental ravings and extra...

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

Date: 1782

"A young man should turn travel--home--leisure--or employment--all to the one grand end of improving himself:--from your account of Dalkeith, I now view it "in my mind's eye" (as Hamlet says) and think it a delightful spot."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"I have often observed--there is more of value in the manner of doing the thing--than in the thing itself--my mind's-eye follows you in the selecting the pretty box--in arranging the picked fruit."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"There is something so amazingly grand--so stupendously affecting--in the contemplating the works of the Divine Architect, either in the moral, or the intellectual world, that I think one may rightly call it the cordial of the soul--it is the physic of the mind--and the best antidote against weak...

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"I have heard it more than once observed of fortunate adventurers--they have come home enriched in purse--but wretchedly barren in intellects--the mind, my dear Jack, wants food--as well as the stomach--why then should not one wish to increase in knowledge as well as money?"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788

"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)