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)

Date: Tuesday, May 22, 1750

"He saw that, instead of conquering their fears, the endeavour of his gay friends was only to escape them; but his philosophy chained his mind to its object, and rather loaded him with shackles than furnished him with arms."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)