Eighteenth Century Quotes

“Disgusting foods, as Madame de Pompadour discovered, do not arouse the senses. They only dull them. Seduction, as you know by now, for women starts with the ears and for men starts with the eyes and for both, travels directly to the stomach. Some say you need sweet murmurings in the ears, but I say laughter, intrigue and delicacies are more powerful.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“The only thing the Marquis does in moderation is moderation”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“I have decided, before the embers of my life dwindle anymore, to embark on a grand tour. With rumblings of revolution and troubled times to come, the old ways are passing on. I have had enough of sitting here twiddling with a quill writing my wretched memoirs. Twelve volumes. Mostly lies but amusing, nevertheless. It is time to return to life.”
― Harry F. MacDonald, Casanova and the Devil's Doorbell

“Wine runs in your veins.”
― debra borchert, Her Own Legacy

“Her widowed mother owns the shop on rue de Grenelle. Should her mother die, despite her expertise, Pauline Léon will not inherit the shop. She can only do so through a husband. As she has not yet met a suitable spouse, we can only imagine the kind of chocolat he would make if he were a wig maker.”
― Debra Borchert, Her Own Legacy

“The privileges of the Nobles of the Sword are not democratic ... Across the country, peasants have been burning crops and châteaux. If the King does not willingly change taxation, I fear commoners and peasants will force him.”
― Debra Borchert, Her Own Legacy

“No one needed to pay me to love you.”
― Debra Borchert, Her Own Legacy

“Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency...”
― Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

“You've been seduced with poetry? Wow. I'm envious. No guy's ever tried anything as classy as that on me."

"If only you could visit the eighteenth century, Highvalley. You would learn what it is to be courted properly.”
― Molly Ringle, Lava Red Feather Blue

“I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.”
― Thomas Robert Malthus

“There is such malice, treachery, and dissimulation, even among professed friends and intimate companions, as cannot fail to strike a virtuous mind with horror; and when Vice quits the stage for a moment, her place is immediately occupied by Folly...”
― Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

“The Americans didn’t think it against God to fight the King of England! A fight that we financed! That’s right. We paid for America’s freedom from one king while we’re slaves to another! And paying for America’s freedom bankrupted France.”
― Debra Borchert, Her Own Legacy

“The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.”
― Joseph de Maistre, Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions

“Mensen die het schavot nog het enige boeiende schouwtoneel vinden, hoeft men niets meer te zeggen. Zij staan daar het ene moment als de auteurs van het stuk, het volgende moment als de acteurs; zouden ze af te leiden zijn, of moet men proberen hun publiek weg te lokken? Nee, laten wij ons de moeite besparen. Op dit moment is de wereld van de politiek alles, en de wereld van de literatuur niets.”
― Belle van Zuylen, Je bent een allerbeminnelijkste dwaas

“You really are hell-bent on attracting attention, aren't you?' said Gideon in a furious whisper. 'Why can't you do as you're told for three hours, just for a change?'

'What a stupid question! Because I'm a woman and totally unacquainted with reason, of course. Anyway, you were the first to step out of line in the dance with Lady Oops My Bosom Is Falling Right Out of My Dress.”
― Kerstin Gier, Smaragdgrün

“آخ، چیست آدمی، این نیمه خدای ستوده! آیا طاقتش درست آن زمانی طی نمی شود که بیش از همه به آن احتیاج دارد؟ و آیا آن وقتی که بر بال شادی اوج می گیرد، یا در غرقاب غم فرو می رود، در این هر دو حس درست زمانی باز نمی ماند و به شهود و آگاهی دلگیر و سرد خود باز پس رانده نمی شود که شوق گم شدن در این سرشاری بی انتها در جانش دویده است؟”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Even in the early phases of tenant reduction, during the seventeenth century, many of the dispossessed appear to have maintained a foothold in the local area, often by turning to spinning and other activity associated with sheep farming - a more formal division of production and gendering of the working population. However, by the 1710s, the decade when the Buccleuchs began efforts to rationalise their 'South Country' operations, as many as two thirds of the Ettrick and Yarrow valley farms were under a single tenancy. By the 1790s, it was nine in ten. It is across this period that widespread dispossession seems to have turned into widespread clearance across the Southern Uplands in general, and Ettrick and Yarrow in particular. Tenants compelled to flit at the end of a tack would take with them wives, children, elderly relatives and unrelated servants, each removal amounting to a substantial dent to the population.”
― Angus Sutherland, Scottish Literary Review, Autumn/Winter 2025