Date: 1754

"Proceed, child, your mind is the unsullied book of nature: Turn to another Leaf"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"Sir Charles Grandison's heart is the book of heaven-- May I not study it?"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1755

"My squire, however, will intimate how I am; while I content myself with assuring you, that I will, to all eternity, preserve engraven upon the tablets of my memory, the benevolence you this day vouchsafed unto me, that I may be grateful for the favour, as long as life shall remain."

— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)

Date: 1756, 1766

A recipe for sympathetic ink

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

Date: 1759

"His Inclination for Lady Dellwyn's Beauty had not Power enough to blot out of his Memory the principal View of all his Actions"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1759

"The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education, but infused at our nativity."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

"For the next two whole stages, no subject would go down, but the heavy blow he had sustain'd from the loss of a son, whom it seems he had fully reckon'd upon in his mind, and register'd down in his pocket-book, as a second staff for his old age, in case Bobby should fail him."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"[M]any, therefore, may violate that rule of right, which the hand of the Almighty has written upon the living tablets of the heart"

— Hawkesworth, John (bap. 1720, d. 1773)

Date: 1761

"[Y]et were his offences against me even greater than they are, your example would teach me to blot them all from my mind"

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1761

"Your brother, narrow-hearted, inhuman wretch, I blot forever from my thoughts"

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)