Date: 1698

"I was apt to think the best way were, to let Nature spend it self; and although those who write out of their own Thoughts do it with as much Ease and Pleasure as a Spider spins his Web; yet the World soon grows weary of Controversies, especially when they are about Personal Matters."

— Stillingfleet, Edward (1635-1699)

Date: 1751

"Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and again to no purpose."

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

Date: January 3, 1750-51, 1807

"Rein in, on these important subjects, your imagination."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1755

"Or, the Power and Sway which the Soul exercises over them! Ten thousand Reins put into her Hands; yet she manages all, conducts all, without the least Perplexity or the least Irregularity: rather, with a Promptitude, a Consistency, and a Speed, that nothing else can equal!"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: 1774

"Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1789

"'Tis [the letter of the law] the birdlime of reason to fasten our senses."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: w. 1789, 1804

"While Vanity unveils her whiffling flags, / Her glittering trinkets, and her tawdry rags-- / Spreads spangled nets, and fills her philter'd bowl, / To fix each Sense, and fascinate the Soul-- / Her birdlime twigs contrived with such sly Art, / That while they tangle thoughts, they trap the heart...

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: December 1790

"Not having leisure or patience to follow this desultory writer through all the devious tracks in which his fancy has started fresh game, I have confined my strictures, in a great measure, to the grand principles at which he has levelled many ingenious arguments in a very specious garb."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"The man has been changed into an artificial monster by the station in which he was born, and the consequent homage that benumbed his faculties like the torpedo’s touch."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)