Date: 1777

"There is a certain kind of trifling, in which a mind not much at ease can sometimes indulge itself. One feels an escape, as it were, from the heart, and is fain to take up with lighter company. It is like the theft of a truant boy, who goes to play for a few minutes while his master is asleep, a...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"Somebody, I think, has compared them to small pieces of coin, which, though of less value than the large, are more current amongst men; but the parallel fails in one respect: a thousand of those livres do not constitute a louis; and I have known many characters possessed of all tha...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[H]er spirits droop more than her body; she is thoughtful and melancholy when she thinks she is not observed, and, what pleases me worse, affects to appear otherwise, when she is"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

Attempts at gaiety may look like "a conquest over the natural pensiveness of [the] mind"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"His youth has been enlightened by letters, and informed by travel; but what is still more valuable, his mind has been early impressed with the principles of manly virtue."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[T]here is, methinks, a languor in your last letter--or is it but the livery of my own imagination, which the objects around me are constrained to wear?"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"He appeared to feel in his situation that dependence I mentioned; in mean souls, this produces servility; in liberal minds, it is the nurse of honourable pride."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)