Date: 1752

"[H]e hath removed the whole Gloom at once, hath driven all Despair out of my Mind, and hath filled it with the most sanguine, and at the same Time, the most reasonable Hopes of making a comfortable Provision for yourself and my dear Children"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"Vanity is plainly her predominant Passion, and, if you will administer to that, it will infallibly throw her into your Arms."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"Indeed Fear is never more uneasy, than when it doth not certainly know its Object: for on such Occasions the Mind is ever employed in raising a thousand Bugbears and Fantoms, much more dreadful than any Realities, and like Children, when they tell Tales of Hobgoblins, seems industrious in terrif...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"I hope I am not guilty of Profaneness; but in Pursuance of that cheerful Chain of Thoughts with which you have inspired me this Afternoon, I was just now lost in a Reverie, and fancied myself in those blissful Mansions which we hope to enjoy hereafter."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1753

The heart may a "stranger to those young desires which haunt the fancy and warm breast of youth"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1753

One may have "a most insidious principle of self-love, that grew up with him from the cradle, and left no room in his heart for the least particle of social virtue"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1754

One may have a hole in their heart "thro' which one may run one's head"

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

Date: 1754

"She had from her chamber-window been shot through the heart by the blind archer, who took his stand on the feather of a military man marching at the head of his company through the market-town in which she lived"

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

Date: 1755

"So that our author did not enter the lists against the memory of the real substantial chivalry, which he held in veneration; but, with design to expel an hideous phantome that possessed the brains of the people, waging perpetual war with true genius and invention."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1755

"I revised my comedies, together with some interludes which had lain some time in a corner, and I did not think them so wretched, but that they might appeal from the muddy brain of this player, to the clearer perception of other actors less scrupulous and more judicious."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)