Date: 1751

"Oh had I known it sooner, engaged as I then was to one, who well deserved my love, could I have guessed miss Betsy Thoughtless was the contriver of that tender fraud, I know not what revolution might have happened in my heart! the empire you had there, was never totally extirpated, and kindness ...

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

Date: 1751

"She addressed herself to him with a familiar air, observing, that she had heard much of his great knowledge, and was come to be a witness of his art, which she desired him to display, in declaring what he knew to be her ruling passion."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

One may meet with an object that disputes the empire of one's heart with a beloved

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

Love may reign in the breast

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

A beloved may acquire "the most absolute empire over" a lover's soul

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1751

"For partly the Recommendation of his Person, but chiefly the Profusion of his Expences made her think him a very desireable Lover; and as she saw that his ruling Passion was Vanity, she was too good a Dissembler, and too much a Mistress of her Trade, not to flatter this Weakness for her own Ends."

— Coventry, (William) Francis Walter (1725-1753/4)

Date: 1751

"Whereas those darts, which fly from the perfections of the mind, penetrate into the soul, and fix a lasting empire there."

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

Date: 1751

"Nothing of body, when friend writes to friend; the mind impelling sovereignly the vassal-fingers."

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

Date: 1752

"Ambition scarce ever produces any Evil, but when it reigns in cruel and savage Bosoms; and Avarice seldom flourishes at all but in the basest and poorest Soil."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

The "blind Guidance" of a predominant passion may account for "the Success of Knaves, the Calamities of Fools," and "all the miseries in which Men of Sense sometimes involve themsleves"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)