Date: 1768

"Why does my pulse beat languid as I write this? and what made La Fleur, whose heart seem'd only to be tuned to joy, to pass the back of his hand twice across his eyes, as the woman stood and told it?"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Maria, tho' not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms--affliction had touch'd her looks with something that was scarce earthly--still she was feminine--and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever wor...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw--and 'tis thou who lifts him up to Heaven--eternal fountain of our feelings!--'tis here I trace thee--and this is thy divinity which stirs within...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table; my heart was sat down the moment I enter'd the room; so I sat down at once like a son of the family."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

One may gain "absolute empire over the mind" of another

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"[T]he generosity of the Dairo, instead of exciting the least emotion of gratitude in Taycho's own breast, acted only as a golden key to unlock all the sluices of his virulence and abuse."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"After a weak mind has been duly prepared, and turned as it were, by opening a sluice or torrent of high-sounding words, the greater the contradiction proposed the stronger impression it makes, because it increases the puzzle, and lays fast hold on the admiration; depositing the small proportion ...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"He knew when to distract its weak brain with a tumult of incongruous and contradictory ideas: he knew when to overwhelm its feeble faculty of thinking, by pouring in a torrent of words without any ideas annexed. These throng in like city-milliners to a Mile-end assembly, while it happens to be u...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"I can assure thee, Peacock, that Richard was a prince of a very agreeable aspect, and excelled in every personal accomplishment; neither was his heart a stranger to the softer passions of tenderness and pity"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)