Date: 1752

"Upon the whole, however, she past a miserable and sleepless Night, her gentle Mind torn and distracted with various and contending Passions, distressed with Doubts, and wandring in a kind of Twilight, which presented her only Objects of different Degrees of Horrour, and where black Despair close...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1760-7

"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But the heat gradually increasing, and in a few seconds more getting beyond the point of all sober pleasure, and then advancing with all speed into the regions of pain,--the soul of Phutatorius, together with all his ideas, his thoughts, his attention, his imagination, judgment, resolution, deli...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1776

"Besides, my Lucy is a perfect Columbus in the terra incognita of lovers hearts, and discovered her faithful Stanley's fond attachment in his speaking eyes, for many months before his tongue revealed it."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Not that I wou'd encourage the modern philosophy, which reduces all virtue to self-interest; for if I may hazard an unborrowed simile, the liberal mind may be compared to the Nile, which enriches the soil, from its own abundance, without requiring any return."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Would it were passed, and that like Aetna, though my bosom flamed, my head was crowned with snow."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1778, 1779

"How rapid was then my Evelina's progress through those regions of fancy and passion whither her new guide conducted her!"

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

Date: 1782

"Mean while Cecilia, disturbed from the calm of soft serenity to which she had yielded every avenue of her soul, now looked forward with distrust and uneasiness, even to the completion of the views which but a few minutes before had comprised all her notions of felicity."

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

Date: 1787

"Those who were well acquainted with the world and the Court, agreed, that the heart of woman was an inexplicable abyss; and all remarked the novelty of this sentiment."

— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)

Date: 1788

"Still, however, the sense of her own incurable unhappiness, her own irretrievable unworthiness, and the disgrace of having sullied the honour of her family, and given pain to such a brother, overwhelmed her with grief and confusion; while her reason, as it at intervals returned, served only to s...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)