Date: 1761

"But now Adversity's refining fire / Melts down the base alloy of earthly passions, / And purifies the temper of the heart."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1761

"Soon as the guilty passion is allay'd, / The green and morbid colour of our souls / Is chang'd to virgin white; a gentle breeze / Of pity springs within us."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1761

"Why then I thank thee, Nature, / That when you made this frame of such frail stuff, / So sensible of harm, so ill array'd / To combat sharp Misfortune, yet you cas'd / My Heart in temper'd steel, and made it proof / Against the soft compunctious stroke of Pity, / Bidding it laugh at all that Fat...

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1761

"But know to thy confusion, not the Winds, / That sweep the Scythian desart, are more deaf, / Than are thy fancied Deities; nor Rocks, / That shake those Winds from off their icy sides, / More hard, or more unfeeling than my heart."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1761

"Inspiration pure impart, / Nerve her Arms and steel her Heart."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1761, 1790

"Such then is God, a spirit pure refin'd / From all material dross, and such the human mind."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

Date: 1761

"Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it?"

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1762

"never joy, / Save th' anxious sordid one to view his gold, / Could touch his marble heart"

— Mickle, William Julius [formerly William Meikle] (1734-1788)

Date: 1762

"He therefore had been little used to any woman but his sober and sensible grand-mother's two cousins who were pretty enough, but had no great charms of understanding; a sister rather silly, and the incomparable Harriot, whose wit was as sound as her judgment solid and sterling, free from affecta...

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

Date: 1762

"But as the fire / Refines the silver; so a taste of woe / Awakes the Soul."

— Mickle, William Julius [formerly William Meikle] (1734-1788)