Date: May 10, 1704

"He that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1705

"The Little Histories of this Kind have taken Place of Romances, whose Prodigious Number of Volumes were sufficient to tire and satiate such whose Heads were most fill'd with those Notions."

— Manley, Delarivier (c. 1670-1724)

Date: 1705

"The Little Histories of this Kind have taken Place of Romances, whose Prodigious Number of Volumes were sufficient to tire and satiate such whose Heads were most fill'd with those Notions."

— Manley, Delarivier (c. 1670-1724)

Date: 1723

"Thou'rt to my Mind so very good, / Its Consolation, Physick, Food."

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: 1752

"Learning, he said, had the same Effect on the Mind, that strong Liquors have on the Constitution; both tending to eradicate all our natural Fire and Energy."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1768

"But there is no nation under heaven abounding with more variety of learning--where the sciences may be more fitly woo'd, or more surely won than here--where art is encouraged, and will so soon rise high--where Nature (take her all together) has so little to answer for--and, to close all, where t...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1773

"So forcibly indeed was Sindall struck with it, that some little time past before he thought of lifting her from the ground; he looked indeed his very soul at every glance; but it was a soul unworthy of the object on which he gazed, brutal, unfeeling and inhuman; he considered her, at that moment...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1782

"Had they mingled in the world, fed high their fancy with hope, and looked forward with expectation of enjoyment; had they been courted by the great, and offered with profusion adulation for their abilities, yet, even when starving, been offered nothing else!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1787

"But her idleness led her into an error; for her mind, though inclined to laziness, sought for a more solid, and more active food."

— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)

Date: 1787

"It is often a trifle; a little crumb; but it is those little crumbs that we must not suffer to accumulate till the next day."

— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)