Date: 1754

"Let [my love] be evermore circumscribed by the laws of reason, of duty"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"How often has that tender bosom, whose glory it would have been to melt at another's woe, and to rejoice in acts of kindness and benevolence to her fellow-creatures, been armed by herself (not the mistress, but the slave, of her passions) not with defensive, but offensive, steel!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1759

"You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy; and finding that his predominant passion was desire of money, I began now to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be thought too great for the release of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"Arriving there, he sought the gloomiest shades, as best suited to the pleasing melancholy that reigned in his mind."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1773

Suicide might be allowable if a man "were under no obligations to any law, either of Nature, or Reason, or Society: not to mention the Revealed Will of God, by which all murder is forbidden."

— Graves, Richard (1715-1804)