Date: 1747-8

"[W]hen I heard her sentiments on two or three subjects, and took notice of that searching eye, darting into the very inmost cells of our frothy brains, by my faith, it made me look about me."

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

Date: 1749

"[I]t would be an ill Office in us to pay a Visit to the inmost Recesses of his Mind, as some scandalous People search into the most secret Affairs of their Friends, and often pry into their Closets and Cupboards only to discover their Poverty and Meanness to the World."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"His Flattery had made such a Dupe of my Aunt, that she assented, without the least Suspicion of his Sincerity, to all he said; so sure is Vanity to weaken every Fortress of the Understanding, and to betray us to every Attack of the Enemy."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"'But you understand Human Nature to the Bottom,' answered Amelia;' and your Mind is a Treasury of all ancient and modern Learning.'"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

The heart is a fortress on a rock

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"Whether Amelia's Beauty, or the Reflexion on the remarkable Act of Justice he had performed, or whatever Motive filled the Magistrate with extraordinary good Humour, and opened his Heart and Cellars, I will not determine;"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1754

"My heart is too big for its prison, putting her hand to it: It wants room, methinks"

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

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1765 [1764]

"No, Isabella, said the princess, I should not deserve this incomparable parent, if the inmost recesses of my soul harboured a thought without her permission."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: 1770-1

"The method that Mrs. Ruby-nose used to dismiss her anger, was to clap herself into an arm-chair with such a whang, that it shook the hot vapours from her brain, and sent them in a hurry down into a capacious store-room called her victualling-office."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)