Date: 1747-8

Imaginations may be "un-reined"

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

Date: 1747-8

"Then how my heart began again to play its pug's tricks!"

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

Date: 1747-8

"The window was open. Away the troublesome bosom-visiter [Conscience], the intruder, is flown."

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

Date: 1747-8

"Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus; / While we, fantastic dreamers, heave and puff, / And sweat with our imagination's weight."

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

Date: 1749

"These were Esteem and Pity; for sure the most outragiously rigid among her Sex will excuse her pitying a Man, whom she saw miserable on her own Account; nor can they blame her for esteeming one who visibly from the most honourable Motives, endeavoured to smother a Flame in his own Bosom, which, ...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

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: 1751

"[H]is heart was shod with a metal much harder than iron, which he was afraid nothing but hell-fire would be able to melt."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1754

"The character of a candid enquirer is very commendable; for in his search whatever he finds he immediately acknowledges; he gives his judgment liberty to exert itself, and restrains his imagination from soaring beyond its strength, and from declaring that he hath found what is not."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"I found I had given a loose to a passion which had no other end but to make me frantic, and consequently miserable; and yet insupportable as my life was, and altho' the alteration of Eustace had taken from me the gratification of this whirlwind of passion, yet was I caught in such a snare...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"But this consuming flame arises first in its own breast; and, let him roam where he will, such a man, like the poor wounded stag, still carries the arrow sticking in his heart"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)