Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"[M]any, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)

Date: 1766

"Their insensibility excited my highest compassion, and blotted my own uneasiness a while from my mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1779, 1794

"Upon the back of each bright heart / These words engraven were [literally], / In mystic characters; fond Love / And joy have fix'd me here."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1780

"In prayer she was employ'd; which instant taught me / That piety must be the bait to snare her, / --So won her confidence, and read her heart."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1791, 1794

"I would endure it all chearfully, could I but once more see my dear, blessed mother, hear her pronounce my pardon, and bless me before I died; but alas! I shall never see her more; she has blotted the ungrateful Charlotte from her remembrance, and I shall sink to the grave loaded with her's and ...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"Oh! never, never! whilst I have existence, will the agony of that moment be erased from my memory."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)