Date: w. 1740, 1748

"Thirsting for Knowledge, but to know the right, / Thro' judgment's optick guide th' illusive sight, / To let in rays on Reason's darkling cell, / And Prejudice's lagging mists dispel."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1749

"Open a window in our breast, / That each our heart may see"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1749

"[I]t would be an ill Office in us to pay a Visit to the inmost Recesses of his Mind, as some scandalous People search into the most secret Affairs of their Friends, and often pry into their Closets and Cupboards only to discover their Poverty and Meanness to the World."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 1750

"The soul cannot long be held in prison, but will fly away, and leave a lifeless body to human malice."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"When we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated our confidence with success, we are naturally inclined to persue the same train of reasoning, to establish some collateral truth, to remove some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the whole comprehension of our system. As a prince in the ardou...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

"But could our Eyes behold the deep Recess, / Where soft Pamela's Thoughts in private rest, / You'd find, in spite of Hymen's sacred Vows, / Ten Hours in Twelve that she abhors her Spouse"

— Leapor, Mary (1722-1746)

Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"But, in order to place this momentous Affair in a true Light, 'tis necessary to go back a little, and acquaint the Reader with what had passed in the Apartment; and also, following the Custom of the Romance and novel-Writers, in the Heart, of our Heroine"

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

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)