Date: 1754

"The poet who writes to the mind's eye, and collects his images through the same medium, lies under a great disadvantage in comparison with the painter"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"The original, from whence [a painter] draws his copy, is an outward object, and his picture, when finish'd, is address'd to the visual sense: whereas the original, from whence the [poet] takes copy, is perceived by the mind's eye, and address'd also to the mental perception of his reader."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"If invention then be only a capacity of finding, and not of creating, we must endeavour (if we would exercise this faculty) to to keep our mind's eye open, and on the search, and not close it up by bending all our thoughts on the gratification of some present humour"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"I should be ashamed of myself, if I would not acknowledge the merit of Ben Johnson as a writer; but a capacity for writing holds so very low a place in my esteem, when weigh'd in the balance with an honest heart, that with me (and I wish it was the same with every other human creature) it...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have tho...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"Yet such horrid thoughts, my sister, have risen in your Amanda's breast, but thanks to the mercy and grave of my redeemer, they past hastily through my bosom, and from the extreme wretchedness of my earthly situation (for surely no torment can be greater to a tender heart, than the breaking up a...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1759

"[S]he had no Food from outward Objects, to employ her animal Spirits, and they therefore prey'd at home; and oppressed her own Mind."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

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

"It is difficult to conquer the Passions, but it is impossible to satisfy them"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)