Date: 1754

"I should be ashamed of myself, if I would not acknowledge the merit of Ben Johnson as a writer; but a capacity for writing holds so very low a place in my esteem, when weigh'd in the balance with an honest heart, that with me (and I wish it was the same with every other human creature) it...

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

Date: 1754

"Those inimitably beautiful chorus's to Shakespear's Harry the fifth, where he desires his audience to play with their fancies, and to suffer him to bear them on the lofty wings of his own sublime imagination, over the expanded ocean to different countries and distant climates, we should have tho...

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

Date: 1754

"Yet such horrid thoughts, my sister, have risen in your Amanda's breast, but thanks to the mercy and grave of my redeemer, they past hastily through my bosom, and from the extreme wretchedness of my earthly situation (for surely no torment can be greater to a tender heart, than the breaking up a...

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

Date: 1755

"So that our author did not enter the lists against the memory of the real substantial chivalry, which he held in veneration; but, with design to expel an hideous phantome that possessed the brains of the people, waging perpetual war with true genius and invention."

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

Date: 1755

"I revised my comedies, together with some interludes which had lain some time in a corner, and I did not think them so wretched, but that they might appeal from the muddy brain of this player, to the clearer perception of other actors less scrupulous and more judicious."

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

Date: 1755

"So eager and intangled was our Hidalgo in this kind of history, that he would often read from morning to night, and from night to morning again, without interruption; till at last, the moisture of his brain being quite exhausted with indefatigable watching and study, he fairly lost his wits."

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

Date: 1755

"Lord have mercy upon us! said the squire, did not I tell your worship to consider well what you were about? did not I assure you, they were no other than wind-mills? indeed no body could mistake them for any thing else, but one who has wind-mills in his own head!"

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

Date: 1755

"You've plainly shewn your soul was brazen, / And eke your snowy bosom flinty."

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

Date: 1755

"[I]n short, it is very well attested, that he had one mistress, whom he inthroned, as sovereign of his heart, and to whom he recommended himself with great caution and privacy, because he piqued himself upon being a secret knight."

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

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)