Date: 1688

"Yet notwithstanding his Silence, which left her in doubt, and more tormented her, she ceas'd not to pursue him with her Letters, varying her Style; sometimes all wanton, loose and raving; sometimes feigning a Virgin-Modesty all over, accusing her self, blaming her Conduct, and sighing her Destin...

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1691

"Can it be a Fault to chuse a better for a worse, and don't all the thinking World agree that this state we are now in, is but a Slavery to sence, a bondage to dull matter, which tedders us down like our Brother Brutes, where we are not only exposed to want and misery, but to all the Insults and ...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"The Tongue is connexed by Veins to the Brain and Heart, by which Nature teacheth us, that it is to be govern'd by the Intellect, whose seat is in the head, so that it may agree with the Heart."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1712, 1715, 1719

"[W]hen once Passion blinds us, Passion misguides us, Passion overthrows us, Passion destroys us, and no Passion so strong and so deceitful as that of Love; Love rocks our Reason into a Lethargy, and then does what it pleases with the rest of our Interior"

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: 1719

"I now began to consider seriously my Condition, and the Circumstance I was reduc'd to, and I drew up the State of my Affairs in Writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few Heirs, as to deliver my Thoughts from daily poring upon them, and a...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"It is for this Reason, that I have so largely set down the Particulars of the Caresses I was treated with by the Jeweller, and also by this Prince; not to make the Story an Incentive to the Vice, which I am now such a sorrowful Penitent for being guilty of, God forbid any shou'd make so vile a U...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1778, 1779

"As soon would I discuss the effect of sound with the deaf, or the nature of colours with the blind, as aim at illuminating with conviction a mind so warped by prejudice, so much the slave of unruly and illiberal passions."

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

Date: 1782

"[A]cquainted ere you meet that you were to meet him no more, your heart would be all softness and grief, and at the very moment when tenderness should be banished from your intercourse, it would bear down all opposition of judgment, spirit, and dignity: you would hang upon every word, because ev...

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

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: 1796

"Pleasure fled, and Shame usurped her seat in his bosom."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)