Date: 1762

"We might spend our time in going from place to place, where none wish to see us except they find a deficiency at the card table, perpetually living among those, whose vacant minds are ever seeking after pleasures foreign to their own tastes, and pursue joys which vanish as soon as possessed."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1766

"I have ever perceived, that where the mind was capacious, the affections were good."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1767

"The vacancy he found in his heart was insupportable."

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

Date: 1767

"Whilst he endeavoured to fill up the vacuity he found in his mind, his time was spent at best but in a sort of insipid tranquillity. The voluptuary has no taste for mental pleasures."

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

Date: 1768

"No doubt the ocean fills the mind with vast ideas."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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

"A small stock of ideas is more easily managed, and sooner displayed than a great quantity crowded together."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1773

"It is not enough, said Annesly, to put weapons into those hands which never have been taught the use of them; the reading we recommend to youth will store their minds with intelligence, if they attend to it properly; but to go a little farther, we must accustom them to apply it, we must teach th...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1773

"But as their novelty at first delighted, their frequency at last subdued him; his mind began to accustom itself to the hurry of thoughtless amusement, and to feel a painful vacancy, when the bustle of the scene was at any time changed for solitude."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1776

"Their hearts are tied up in their purses."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)