Date: 1747

"Since here defective, Heaven be so kind / With never-fading charms to dress my mind"

— Teft, Elizabeth (fl. 1741-7)

Date: October 20, 1752

It is bad manners for Richardson's heroines to "declare all they think [since] fig leaves are necessary for our minds as our bodies."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1754

"Maecenas would laugh at any Irregularity in Horace's Dress, but not at any Caprice in his Behaviour, because it was common and fashionable: so a Man's Person, which is the Dress of his Soul, only is ridiculed, while the vicious Qualities of it escape."

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760-7

"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)