Date: 1768

A beloved may "o'ercome" a lover's "yielding heart" and fix "her empire there"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: w. 1766, 1768

"And reason fixed her empire in my breast."

— Pye, Henry James (1745-1813)

Date: 1768

"Hope and fear alternate rising, / Strive for empire o'er my heart."

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

Date: 1768

"When the situation is, what we would wish, nothing is so ill-timed as to hint at the circumstances which make it so: you thank Fortune, continued she--you had reason--the heart knew it, and was satisfied; and who but an English philosopher would have sent notices of it to the brain to reverse th...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's eloge, as my own, having been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1769

"I refused, saying, that, as I was resolved he should in every point be the aggressor, he should fire first; he did, and missed me, and on my soul I believe designedly; for by the changes in his countenance, I could perceive that grief, and not anger, was then the predominant passion in his mind."

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

Date: 1769

One may gain "absolute empire over the mind" of another

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1769

One may banish from her heart a hopeless passion

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

Date: 1769

"And still my soul they [cares] hold in pain, / Their cruel empire to maintain."

— Fergusson, Robert (1750-1774)

Date: 1769

"Do you think it possible, Lucy, for a Frenchwoman to love? is not vanity the ruling passion of their hearts?"

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