Date: 1748

"But how will this dismantled soul appear,/ When stripped of all it lately held so dear,/ Forced from its prison of expiring clay, / Afraid and shivering at the doubtful way?"

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: 1747-8

"Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame."

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

Date: August 12, 1738, to Nov. 1, 1739 [1748]

"Therefore the Eyes of my Understanding are not yet open'd, but the Old Veil is still upon my Heart."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: Saturday, November 10, 1750

"It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fictitious benevolence."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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: 1752

"To charm his reason dress your mind, / Till love shall be with friendship joined."

— Clark [née Lewis], Esther (bap. 1716, d. 1794)

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: 1754

"Bred to think as well as speak by rote, they furnish their minds, as they furnish their houses or cloath their bodies, with the fancies of other men, and according to the mode of the age and country."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"But, must the Soul, uncloth'd and cold, / Appear, her Maker to behold? / Or shall the gaping Grave restore, / The Robe of Flesh which once she wore?"

— Tollet, Elizabeth (1694-1754)

Date: 1755

"Those would seem Gentlemen! who strut the Mall, / In Waistcoats lac'd on Sundays--troll about, / Leaving their Minds undrest--all Show without."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758)