Date: 1747-8

"But the over-refinement of Platonic sentiments always sinks into the dross and feces of that Passion"

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

Date: 1747-8

"If it were only, that I can see this man without losing any of that dignity (what other word can I use, speaking of myself, that betokens decency, and not arrogance?) which is so necessary to enable me to look up, or rather, with the mind's eye, I may say, to l...

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

Date: 1747-8

"Which, by recording the principal circumstances of past facts, and laying them close together, in a continued narration, kept the mind from languishing, and gave constant exercise to its reflections."

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

Date: 1747-8

"And that the Whole would be thereby deprived of that Variety, which is deemed the Soul of a Feast, whether mensal or mental."

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

Date: 1747-8

"If in look, if in speech, a girl waves way to undue levity, depend upon it, the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already."

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

Date: 1749

"For Philosophy and Religion may be called the Exercises of the Mind, and when this is disordered they are as wholesome as Exercise can be to a distempered Body."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1751

"I am here, thought I, like a poor condemned Criminal, who knows his Execution is fixed for such a Day, nay such an Hour, and dies over and over in Imagination, and by the Torture of his Mind, till that Hour comes"

— Paltock, Robert (1697-1767)

Date: 1751

"In this corps he remained three years, during which, he had no opportunity of seeing actual service, except at the affair of Glensheel; and this life of insipid quiet, must have hung heavy upon a youth of M---'s active disposition, had not he found exercise for the mind, in'reading books of amus...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1752

"I am going now, Madam, to relate to you one of those strange Accidents, which are produced by such a Train of Circumstances, that mere Chance hath been thought incapable of bringing them together; and which have therefore given Birth, in superstitious Minds, to Fortune, and to several other imag...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"For Love, in the Minds of Men, hath one Quality at least of a Fever, which is to prefer Coldness in the Object. Confess, dear Will, is there not something vastly refreshing in the cool Air of a Prude."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)