Date: 1691

"Why then shou'd I not pull up the stake, or get my Lock and Chain off, and scamper away in the interminable Fields of the invisible World."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"Towards the end of which Chapter Evander confesses his Wit has a little run away with him; so ungovernable a thing is towring Fancy, when not hand-cufft by powerful Reason, flying out against Learning, beloved Learning, at so Satyrical a rate as almost makes his heart bleed to read it, when he t...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"Madam, it is no small demonstration of the entire Resignation which I have made of my Heart to your Chains, since the secrets of it are no longer in my power."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

Date: 1692

"Nor would a man be willing always to be breaking his Brains to chain up the free will of his Wife, which, as some Opinions hold has a free dispensation from above."

— Gildon, Charles (1665-1724)

Date: 1721, 1722

"But you who have known how to break the chains which my mind itself had forged, how will you break those that tie my hands?"

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1724

"These were my Baits, these the Chains by which the Devil held me bound; and by which I was indeed, too fast held for any Reasoning that I was then Mistress of, to deliver me from."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"Madam, of what use is our Reason, if we chain it up when we most want it?"

— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)

Date: 1727

"Jenny [said she] I am strangely embarrassed about this sleepy Fit you and I have had, and am entirely of the Doctor's Opinion, that it was no Natural Repose; yet where to place either the Deceit or Design of it I know not, but my whole Thoughts have been chained to that one single Subject all th...

— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)

Date: 1747-8

"To send a man and horse on purpose; as I did! My imagination chained to the belly of the beast, in order to keep pace with him!"

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

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)