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: 1760

"Upon this I mounted into the censorium of his brain, to learn from the spirit of consciousness, which you call self, the cause of so uncommon a change, as it is contrary to the fundamental rules of our order, ever to give up an heart of which we once get possession."

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"But though I lost the greatest part of my power over her, by coming into her possession, I still found ample room in her heart for my abode"

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760-7

"[I]n the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for [the biographer];--for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red hot iron,--must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The gifts and endowments of wit and judgment may "be poured down warm as each of us could bear it,--scum and sediment an' all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)