Date: 1769

"The first moment I saw Colonel Rivers convinced me my heart had till then been a stranger to true tenderness"

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

Date: 1770

"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1770

"How light my heart feels from / A villainous guest that sat like lead upon it!"

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: 1770

"But this faculty [Reason] has been much perverted, often to vile, and often to insignificant purposes; sometimes chained like a slave or malefactor, and sometimes soaring in forbidden and unknown regions."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"What is it to which a wise man will pay more attention, than to his reason and conscience, those divine monitors by which he is to judge even of religion itself, and which he is not at liberty to disobey, though an angel from heaven should command him?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"We are informed by Father MALEBRANCHE, that the senses were at first as honest faculties as one could desire to be endued with, till after they were debauched by original sin; an adventure, from which they contracted such an invincible propensity to cheating, that they are now continually lying ...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770-1

"The method that Mrs. Ruby-nose used to dismiss her anger, was to clap herself into an arm-chair with such a whang, that it shook the hot vapours from her brain, and sent them in a hurry down into a capacious store-room called her victualling-office."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1770-1

"By this time the choleric vapours, which madam had jogged downwards when she let her broad bottom salute the chair with such a whack, growing warm amongst the hodg-potch they found in her store-room, which we may properly stile a hot-house, began to ascend, and take possession of their former te...

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1771, 1806

" 'Tho' from my mind each flatt'ring thought retir'd, / 'And in my bosom Hope and Peace expir'd;"

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1772, 1788

"Tho' some hollow hearts may have much room to spare, / The Devil himself wou'd not chuse to dwell there."

— Stevens, George Alexander (1710?-1784)