Date: 1759

"The spectator, therefore, must find it much more difficult to sympathize entirely, and keep perfect time, with his sorrow, than thoroughly to enter into his joy, and must depart much further from his own natural and ordinary temper of mind in the one case than in the other."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"The great pleasure of conversation, and indeed of society, arises from a certain correspondence of sentiments and opinions, from a certain harmony of minds, which like so many musical instruments coincide and keep time with one another."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"But he can only hope to obtain this by lowering his passion to that pitch, in which the spectators are capable of going along with him. He must flatten, if I may be allowed to say so, the sharpness of its natural tone, in order to reduce it to harmony and concord with the emotions of those who a...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"When music imitates the modulations of grief or joy, it either actually inspires us with those passions, or at least puts us in the mood which disposes us to conceive them. But when it imitates the notes of anger, it inspires us with fear. Joy, grief, love, admiration, devotion, are all of them ...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Our heart, as it adopts and beats time to his grief, so is it likewise animated with that spirit by which he endeavours to drive away or destroy the cause of it."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"To see the emotions of their hearts, in every respect, beat time to his own, in the violent and disagreeable passions, constitutes his sole consolation."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1759

"Our heart must adopt the principles of the agent, and go along with all the affections which influenced his conduct, before it can intirely sympathize with, and beat time to, the gratitude of the person who has been benefited by his actions."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1761

"Wake my Harp! to melting Measures, / Pour thy softest, sweetest Treasures, / Such as lift the Thoughts on high; / 'Till the rapt Soul, Earth forsaking, / Heaven-ward it's Flight is taking, / On the Wings of Harmony."

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

Date: 1761

"Our General amidst the Noise of War, / Has a Soul tun'd to all the softer Passions."

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

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"It must, it must surely be, that this jarring discordant life is but the prelude to some future harmony; the soul attuned to virtue here, shall go from hence to fill up the universal choir where Tien presides in person, where there shall be no tyrants to frown, no shackles to bind, nor no whips ...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)