Date: 1754

"I tried to look again into the paper; but the contents were all in my mind, and filled it"

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

Date: 1754

"In these papers is my heart laid open"

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

Date: 1754

"My Soul complains on paper"

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

Date: 1754

"In presence, we will be one; in absence, we will not be divided; for we will mingle souls and sentiments on paper."

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

Date: 1754

"She put me upon recollecting the giddy scene, which those dreadfully interesting ones that followed it, had made me wish to blot out of my memory."

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

Date: 1754

"I wish this ugly word foreign were blotted out of my vocabulary; out of my memory, rather"

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

Date: 1754

"Proceed, child, your mind is the unsullied book of nature: Turn to another Leaf"

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

Date: 1754

"Sir Charles Grandison's heart is the book of heaven-- May I not study it?"

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

Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"[M]any, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)