Date: 1776

"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

Date: 1776

"The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who have made such a great progress in the sciences, were not actuated by supernatural causes, or any innate principles in their original formation; the mind is a mere blank, but capable of receiving such impressions as custom, education, or any other relative c...

— Gwynn, John (bap. 1713, d. 1786)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"From a stranger hand / Ah, what can infancy expect, when she / Whose essence was inwove with thine, whose life, / Whose soul thou didst participate, neglects / Herself in thee, and breaks the strongest seal / Which nature stamp'd in vain upon her heart"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"Well-skill'd / To form the growing soul, and on its young / And opening bud to fix the impression deep / Of every generous thought"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"Oft let remembrance sooth his mind / With dreams of former days, / When in the lap of Peace reclined / He framed his infant lays; / When Fancy roved at large, nor Care / Nor cold Distrust alarm'd, / Nor Envy with malignant glare / His simple youth had harm'd."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1776

"I am provoked at this natural incapacity of conveying my sentiments to you; words are but a cloak, or rather a clog, to our ideas; there should be no curtain before the hearts of friends; and the longing I have ever felt for an intuitive converse, is to me a strong argument for a future state."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"A thousand disagreeable images rushed on my imagination, in that instant, I crushed their growth, and talked of India, of my other sisters, Lucy, and Mrs. Selwyn, and of you also, till we were summoned to the saloon, where supper was prepared for me."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"I have very uneasy apprehensions, tho' I hope they are not well founded, that Sir James Desmond's ruling passion is the love of play."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"The country, as the poets tell us, is the scene for love; the pleasing objects that surround us, the pureness of the air, but, above all, its stillness, harmonize the soul, and render it susceptible of every soft and tender feeling."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)