Date: 1785

"To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong: it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships, to weigh a guinea. I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1787

"But let me give his m*****y a hint, / Fresh from my brain's prolific mint."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: w. 1788, 1810

"Thee, Bard morose, / Churlish amid thy fancy's golden stores, / Thee will I teach, censorious as thou art, / What is not Virtue."

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1788

"When Rochely got home, he set about examining the state of his heart exactly as he would have examined the check book of one of his customers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"A different store his richer freight imparts-- / The gem of virtue, and the gold of hearts; / The social sense, the feelings of mankind, / And the large treasure of a godlike mind!"

— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)

Date: 1790

"Men are caught indeed by the effusions of a brilliant fancy and bright imagination; but its refulgence and flashes, like the coruscations of the diamond, serve only to sparkle in the eye of the beholder, and to dazzle his sight, without further use or advantage to any one: whereas practical good...

— Moore, Charles (fl. 1785-90)

Date: 1790

"Yet what infuses his mind unstain'd and pure? / Nurtur'd in venal, sycophantic schools-- / Eras'd each sterling virtue of the soul-- / Debas'd--new coin'd in flattery's servile mint, / He may become a pander to a prince."

— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Date: 1790

"The idle crowd in fashion's train, / Their trifling comment, pert reply, / Who talk so much, yet talk in vain, / How pleas'd for thee, Oh nymph, I fly! / For thine is all the wealth of mind, / Thine the unborrow'd gems of thought, / The flash of light, by souls refin'd, / From heav'n's empyreal ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1790

"If you were thus destitute of mental funds, the proceeding is in its natural course."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)