Date: 1752

"Learning, he said, had the same Effect on the Mind, that strong Liquors have on the Constitution; both tending to eradicate all our natural Fire and Energy."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"'O Miss Mathews! we have heard of Men entirely Masters of their Passions, and of Hearts which can carry this Fire in them, and conceal it at their Pleasure."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"Perhaps there may be such; but if there are, those Hearts may be compared, I believe, to Damps, in which it is more difficult to keep Fire alive than to prevent its blazing: In mine, it was placed in the Midst of combustible Matter."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1753

One may "blow the coals of jealousy"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1754

"Souls of tinder, discretions of flimsy gauze, that conceal not their folly--One day they will think as I do; and perhaps before they have daughters who will convince them of the truth of my assertion"

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

Date: 1760-7

"[A]nd what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch logician or commentator."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine [ideas] are like a smoak-jack."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What a conjuncture was here lost! ... my uncle Toby in one of the finest dispositions for it in the world;--his head like a smoak-jack;--the funnel unswept, and the ideas whirling round and round about in it, all obfuscated and darkened over with fuliginous matter!"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)