Date: 1759

"If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours, said he, my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"I have been a slave to a hopeless passion too long; I am now resolved to struggle with my chains: you, Madam, must assist me in breaking them intirely; and I make no doubt but that time, joined to my own efforts, and aided by your sweetness of disposition, your tenderness, and admirable sense, w...

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1761

"To one genius it is necessary to give wings, and to another shackles; one should be spurred forward, another reined in; one should be encouraged, another intimidated; sometimes it should be checked, and at others assisted."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1769

"That we are generally tyrannical, I am obliged to own; but such of us as know how to be happy, willingly give up the harsh title of master, for the more tender and endearing one of friend; men of sense abhor those customs which treat your sex as if created meerly for the happiness of the other; ...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1782

"All that pride could demand, and all to which ambition could aspire, all that happiness could cover or the most scrupulous delicacy exact, in her I found united; and while my heart was enslaved by her charms, my understanding exulted in its fetters."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1788

"Their minds were shackled with a set of notions concerning propriety, the fitness of things for the world's eye, trammels which always hamper weak people."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"He had been the slave of beauty, the captive of sense; love he ne'er had felt; the mind never rivetted the chain, nor had the purity of it made the body appear lovely in his eyes."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)