Date: 1751

"I proceeded therefore--That I loved Familiar-letter-writing, as I had more than once told her, above all the species of writing: It was writing from the heart (without the fetters prescribed by method or study) as the very word 'Cor-respondence' implied"

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

Date: 1759

"But the Nets woven by the human Imagination, altho' they are composed of the smallest Materials, are perhaps full as difficult to be broken as the strongest real Bonds"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"Lady Dellwyn now felt herself bound in the most whimsical Chain, made only by her own Imagination, which had imposed on her the Belief that she was bereft of all Liberty of breaking off her Acquaintance with Lord Clermont.

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1769

"That we are generally tyrannical, I am obliged to own; but such of us as know how to be happy, willingly give up the harsh title of master, for the more tender and endearing one of friend; men of sense abhor those customs which treat your sex as if created meerly for the happiness of the other; ...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1782

"All that pride could demand, and all to which ambition could aspire, all that happiness could cover or the most scrupulous delicacy exact, in her I found united; and while my heart was enslaved by her charms, my understanding exulted in its fetters."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1788

"Their minds were shackled with a set of notions concerning propriety, the fitness of things for the world's eye, trammels which always hamper weak people."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"He had been the slave of beauty, the captive of sense; love he ne'er had felt; the mind never rivetted the chain, nor had the purity of it made the body appear lovely in his eyes."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"My passions must be, ought to be, and therefore shall be, under my control; and, being conscious of the purity of my own intentions, I have never thought that the emanations of mind ought to be shackled by the dread of their being misinterpreted."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1794

"I would not shackle you with fetters of suspicion; I would have you governed by justice and reason."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)