Date: w. 1736, 1749

"Why should I drag along this life I hate, / Without one thought to mitigate the weight? / Whence this mysterious bearing to exist, / When every joy is lost, and every hope dismissed? / In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, / And mourn in prison, while I keep the key?"

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: Tuesday, May 22, 1750

"He saw that, instead of conquering their fears, the endeavour of his gay friends was only to escape them; but his philosophy chained his mind to its object, and rather loaded him with shackles than furnished him with arms."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Saturday, 13 October 1750

"Those parallel circumstances, and kindred images, to which we readily conform our minds, are, above all other writings, to be found in narratives of the lives of particular persons; and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography, since none can be more deligh...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1751

Venus "Bids the warm heart with friendship glow, / Or melt in pity's softer flow; / In chains our boasted reason bind, / And rule at will th'impassion'd mind."

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1751

"And fettering on her Throne th' immortal Mind, / The Guidance of her Realm to Passions wild resign'd."

— West, Gilbert (1703-1756)

Date: 1751, 1777

"I suppose, if Cicero were now alive, it would be found difficult to fetter his moral sentiments by narrow systems; or persuade him, that no qualities were to be admitted as virtues, or acknowledged to be a part of personal merit, but what were recommended by The Whole Duty of Man."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751

"Thus a lively Imagination and unperceived Self-Love, fetter the Heart in certain ideal Bonds of their own creating: Till at length some turbulent and furious Passion arising in its Strength, breaks these fantastic Shackles which Fancy had imposed, and leaps to its Prey like a Tyger chained by Co...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: January 3, 1750-51, 1807

"Therefore I must insist, that every woman, whether of equal prudence with Clarissa, or not, whether the man proposed be quite as odious as Solmes, or not, whether she have an absolute aversion to him, or only be indifferent, or rather averse to him, whether she be in love with some other, or not...

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: Saturday, April 6, 1751

"Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is invigorated and roused, by which the attractions of pleasure are interrupted, and the chains of sensuality are broken."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)