Date: 1744, 1753

The mind may be "so weakened by the continual Daggers that pierce it, that our Judgment is lost, and we hourly accuse ourselves for something we have done, or something we have omitted, condemning ourselves for what we cannot account for."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1744, 1753

"But this Fallacy of Mrs. Orgueil was as plainly perceived by little Camilla, as it would have been by any grown Person whatever; for there is no Difficulty in discovering such kind of Fallacies, unless the Indulgence of violent Passions blinds and perverts the Judgment."

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1748

"Cæsar, Pompey, and Alexander the Great are continually in his mouth; and as he reads a good deal without any judgment to digest it, his ideas are confused, and his harrangues as unintelligible as infinite."

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1747-8

Passion may blind the judgment and help on meditated delusion

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

Date: 1747-8

"Will not some serious thoughts mingle with thy melilot, and tear off the callus of thy mind, as that may stay the leather from thy back, and as thy epispastics may strip the parchment from thy plotting head?"

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

Date: 1747-8

"I can fancy, that to pink my body like my mind, I need only to be put into a hogshead stuck full of steel-pointed spikes, and rolled down a hill three times as high as the Monument."

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

Date: 1747-8

"But the over-refinement of Platonic sentiments always sinks into the dross and feces of that Passion"

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

Date: 1747-8

"If it were only, that I can see this man without losing any of that dignity (what other word can I use, speaking of myself, that betokens decency, and not arrogance?) which is so necessary to enable me to look up, or rather, with the mind's eye, I may say, to l...

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

Date: 1747-8

"Which, by recording the principal circumstances of past facts, and laying them close together, in a continued narration, kept the mind from languishing, and gave constant exercise to its reflections."

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

Date: 1747-8

"And that the Whole would be thereby deprived of that Variety, which is deemed the Soul of a Feast, whether mensal or mental."

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