Date: 1678

"But Fancy, I think, in Poetry, is like Faith in Religion; it makes far discoveries, and soars above reason, but never clashes, or runs against it. Fancy leaps, and frisks, and away she's gone; whilst reason rattles the chains, and follows after."

— Rymer, Thomas (1641-1713)

Date: January 3, 1750-51, 1807

"Therefore I must insist, that every woman, whether of equal prudence with Clarissa, or not, whether the man proposed be quite as odious as Solmes, or not, whether she have an absolute aversion to him, or only be indifferent, or rather averse to him, whether she be in love with some other, or not...

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

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)

Date: 1754

"What is the juxta-position of ideas? what is that chain which connects, by intermediate ideas that are the links of it, ideas that are remote, but figurative stile?"

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"Then shall my cruel Foe, abash'd, recede, / Finding his artful Snares are vainly spread. / Of rolling Years, eleven are past in Pain, / Since I was doom'd to wear the galling Chain: / The Chain which am'rous Minds are forc'd to bear, / Still to the most Submissive, most severe."

— Masters, Mary (1694-1771)

Date: 1774

"When they come to be a little better acquainted with themselves, and with their own species, they discover that plain right reason is, nine times in ten, the fettered and shackled attendant of the triumph of the heart and the passions; and, consequently, they address themselves nine times in ten...

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

Date: w. 1789, 1804

"Can Mammon's votaries vainly hope to bind, / In shining shackles, his immortal Mind?"

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

Date: December 1790

"The imperfection of all modern governments must, without waiting to repeat the trite remark, that all human institutions are unavoidably imperfect, in a great measure have arisen from this simple circumstance, that the constitution, if such an heterogeneous mass deserve that name, was settled in...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793

"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have i...

— Hays, Mary (1760-1843)

Date: 1810

"Years pass away--let us suppose them past, / Th' accomplish'd nymph for freedom looks at last; / All hardships over, which a school contains, / The spirit's bondage and the body's pains; / Where teachers make the heartless, trembling set / Of pupils suffer for their own regret."

— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)