Date: 1760-7

"Corporal Trim's description had fired his imagination,--my uncle Toby could not shut his eyes."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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: 1763

"My soul is on fire at this insult: his age, his virtues protect him, but Lord Melvin--Let him avoid my fury."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1767

"A holy ardor was kindled in his breast, which he had never felt before; he found his faculties enlarged, his mind was transported above this world; he felt as it were unimbodied, and an involuntary adjuration burst from his lips."

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

Date: 1767

"I was now resolved to be myself an eye-witness of thy behaviour, and to try if there was any spark of virtue remaining in thy soul which could possibly be rekindled."

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

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"The fire caught--and the whole city, like the heart of one man, open'd itself to Love."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1773

"But his temper was not altogether of that fiery kind, which some young men, so circumstanced, and so educated, are possessed of."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1776

"Would it were passed, and that like Aetna, though my bosom flamed, my head was crowned with snow."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)