Date: 1754

"But I could no longer divert myself by Proteus-like putting on that character which best suited my fancy; for I was now chain'd down and enslaved to the most rigid of all tyrants, an uncontroulable passion."

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

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

"He sends his Harbinger before, the Youth / Adorn'd with Beauty, Chastity and Truth: / To base unworthy Slavery betray'd, / With Fetters gall'd, in Chains of Iron laid, / Which pierc'd his Soul; till the celestial Word, / In destin'd Hour, his Innocence explor'd."

— Tollet, Elizabeth (1694-1754)

Date: 1755

"When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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: 1756

"A lazy languor creeps along my veins; / Dull, and more dull my heavy eyelids grow, / And ev'ry sense accepts the leaden chains."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1756, 1766

"But then a question may be asked, What need have we of revelation, since reason can so fully instruct us, and its bonds alone are sufficient to hold us;--and in particular, what becomes of the principal part of revelation, called redemption?

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

Date: 1758

"Fortune is an evil Chain to the Body; and Vice, to the Soul. For he whose Body is unbound, and whose Soul is chained, is a Slave. On the contrary, he whose Body is chained, and his Soul unbound, is free."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1758

"The Chain of the Body, Nature unbinds by Death; and Vice, by Money: the Chain of the Soul, Virtue unbinds, by Learning, and Experience, and philosophic Exercise."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

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)