Date: 1744

"By toys entangled, or in guilt bemired, / [Ambition] turns a curse; it is our chain and scourge / In this dark dungeon, where confined we lie, / Close-grated by the sordid bars of sense; / All prospect of eternity shut out; / And, but for execution, ne'er set free."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"What slave, unbless'd, who from to-morrow's dawn / Expects an empire? He forgets his chain, / And, throned in thought, his absent sceptre waves."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Yet not by all / Those lying forms which fancy in the brain / Engenders, are the kindling passions driven, / To guilty deeds; nor reason bound in chains, / That vice alone may lord it: oft adorn'd / With solemn pageants, folly mounts the throne, / And plays her idiot-anticks, like a queen. / A t...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Has thy constant heart refus'd / The silken fetters of delicious ease?"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1745

"Though various are the tempers of mankind, / Pleasure's gay family hold all in chains."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"Go, fix some weighty truth; / Chain down some passion; do some generous good; / Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile; / Correct thy friend; befriend thy greatest foe; / Or, with warm heart, and confidence Divine, / Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"His appetite wears Reason's golden chain, / And finds in due restraint its luxury."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1745

"'I am too noble, and of too high a birth,' saith that excellent moralist, 'to be a slave to my body; which I look upon only as a chain thrown upon the liberty of my soul.'"

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

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: 1748, 1754

"If we attend to that Curiosity, or prodigious Thirst of Knowledge, which is natural to the Mind in every Period of its Progress, and consider withal the endless Round of Business and Care, and the various Hardships to which the Bulk of Mankind are chained down, it is evident, that in this presen...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)