Date: 1774

"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men; when his merit has received the stamp of their approbation, women make it current, that is to say, put him in fashion."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method, their distribution...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"This weakness did not proceed from a bad heart, but was merely the effect of vanity, or an unbridled imagination."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1774

"He magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination, and is either blind to her failings, or converts them into beauties."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1774

"Do not marry a fool; he is the most intractable of all animals; he is led by his passions and caprices, and is incapable of hearing the voice of reason."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1774

"Great pride always accompanies delicacy, however concealed under the appearance of the utmost gentleness and modesty, and is the passion of all others most difficult to conquer."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1774-1781

"When I am purified by the light of heaven my soul will become the mirrour of the world, in which I shall discern all abstruse secrets."

— Warton, Thomas, the younger (1728-1790)

Date: 1775

"Intellect, as has he [Aristotle] had said before, was in CAPACITY, after a certain manner, the several Objects intelligible; but was in ACTUALITY no one of them, until it first comprehended it--and that it was the same with the Mind or HUMAN UNDERSTANDIN...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)