Date: 1754

"It was my father's desire and my mother's practice to prevent the entrance of error, and then they made no doubt but truth would find room to inhabit my well-taught mind"

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

Date: 1754

"I at that moment felt strangers in my breast, distracting and tearing me asunder"

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

Date: 1754

"And now with triumphant voices the Cry broke forth into a loud huzza; declaring, that they were not ignorant who these strangers were, that had enter'd Portia's breast."

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

Date: 1754

"Then thus Philantha, in whose breast / Good-nature is a constant guest,"

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"And let every deformed Person comfort himself with reflecting; that tho' his Soul hath not the most convenient and beautiful Apartment, yet that it is habitable: that the Accommodation will serve in an Inn upon the Road: that he is but Tenant for Life, or (more properly) at Will: and that, while...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1754

"Our simple ideas, and even our complex ideas, and notions return sometimes of themselves, we know not why, nor how, mechanically, as it were, uncalled by the mind, and often to the disturbance of it in the pursuit of other ideas, to which these intruders are foreign."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1755

"Thoughts come crouding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject."

— Dryden [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]

Date: 1755

"Of sorriest fancies your companions making, / Using those thoughts which should indeed have died / With them they think on."

— Shakespeare [from Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language]