Date: 1760

"Whenever this shall be executed, it is to be looked upon as the work of true genius; but when fallen short of, as often happens, it is to be deemed the impotent effort of the hard-bound brains of low plagiaries, whose memory is filled with the shreds and ill-chosen scraps of other mens wit."

— Macklin, Charles (1697-1797)

Date: 1765

"A Man's House may be so fill'd with Furniture, that he shall want Room to stir; and a Man's Head may be so stuff'd with other People's Thoughts, that his own shall be stifled."

— Anonymous

Date: 1767

"Others however are more remote, and lie far beyond the reach of ordinary faculties; coming only within the verge of those few persons, whose minds are capacious enough to contain that prodigious croud of ideas, which an extensive observation and experience supply; whose understandings are penetr...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1773

"Instead of contemplating our own fancied perfections, or even real superiority with self-complacence, religion will teach us to 'look into ourselves, and fear:' the best of us, God knows, have enough to fear, if we honestly search into all the dark recesses of the heart, and bring out every thou...

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

Date: 1774

"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...

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

Date: 1779, 1781

"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1781

"How solidly he establishes, in Opposition to the celebrated Mr. Locke, the Doctrine of Innate Ideas; or that the Soul of Man, is not in its first created State, a mere Rasa Tabula, or blank Paper, but full of divine Sensations, and the Powers, Riches and Glories of Eternity; all treasured up and...

— Anonymous; [L--]

Date: 1785

"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)