Date: 1752

"Indeed Fear is never more uneasy, than when it doth not certainly know its Object: for on such Occasions the Mind is ever employed in raising a thousand Bugbears and Fantoms, much more dreadful than any Realities, and like Children, when they tell Tales of Hobgoblins, seems industrious in terrif...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

"I hope I am not guilty of Profaneness; but in Pursuance of that cheerful Chain of Thoughts with which you have inspired me this Afternoon, I was just now lost in a Reverie, and fancied myself in those blissful Mansions which we hope to enjoy hereafter."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1753

"We often see that to reverse this boasted constancy is the work of but a single minute,--and then in vain their past professions recoil upon their minds;--in vain the idea of the forsaken fair haunts them in nightly visions."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1754

One may have a hole in their heart "thro' which one may run one's head"

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

Date: 1754

"She had from her chamber-window been shot through the heart by the blind archer, who took his stand on the feather of a military man marching at the head of his company through the market-town in which she lived"

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

Date: 1759

"Even this Piece of Wisdom did not find its Way into his Mind by Reflexion (that Passage for its Entrance had long been too closely barricadoed), but came in at his Eyes, and engaged his constant Counsellors, his Inclinations, on the Side of a fair Object he had accidentally beheld, at the House ...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"But the Nets woven by the human Imagination, altho' they are composed of the smallest Materials, are perhaps full as difficult to be broken as the strongest real Bonds"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"Lady Dellwyn now delighted her Fancy with erecting a Pair of mental Scales; in One Balance placing her own newly-discovered Merits, and in the other all such Virtue as she allowed her Lord to be possessed of."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent the joys of early love and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"This [her own Mind] being haunted with Ghosts, dejected with an unaccountable Melancholy, and afflicted with a Variety of Distempers, tho' we are at a Loss to discover what Appellation to give them, is very often the Result of nothing more than a strong Imagination unimployed, which could be all...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)