Date: 1753

"[M]ight I not hope my love, my truth, my perseverance, would in time find some room in a corner of that heart which doubtless then would have exterminated its first ideas.'"

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1754

"My heart is too big for its prison, putting her hand to it: It wants room, methinks"

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

Date: 1759

"Even this Piece of Wisdom did not find its Way into his Mind by Reflexion (that Passage for its Entrance had long been too closely barricadoed), but came in at his Eyes, and engaged his constant Counsellors, his Inclinations, on the Side of a fair Object he had accidentally beheld, at the House ...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

Imitators of Nature are "Searchers into the inmost Labyrinths of the human Mind"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"[A]nd her Mind, at that time, might be likened to a Theatre, on which the Tragedy of a glittering Cross, and a Pair of Diamond Ear-rings, was acting, with much more Propriety than the envious Critic called Othello The Tragedy of the Handkerchief."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

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: 1760

"Upon this I mounted into the censorium of his brain, to learn from the spirit of consciousness, which you call self, the cause of so uncommon a change, as it is contrary to the fundamental rules of our order, ever to give up an heart of which we once get possession."

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"But though I lost the greatest part of my power over her, by coming into her possession, I still found ample room in her heart for my abode"

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760-7

"[I]n the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for [the biographer];--for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red hot iron,--must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The gifts and endowments of wit and judgment may "be poured down warm as each of us could bear it,--scum and sediment an' all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)