Date: 1754

"If invention then be only a capacity of finding, and not of creating, we must endeavour (if we would exercise this faculty) to to keep our mind's eye open, and on the search, and not close it up by bending all our thoughts on the gratification of some present humour"

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

Date: 1754

"How you wound my soul by the supposition!"

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

Date: 1754

"Souls of tinder, discretions of flimsy gauze, that conceal not their folly--One day they will think as I do; and perhaps before they have daughters who will convince them of the truth of my assertion"

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

Date: 1754

"My dear Dr. Bartlett, said he, your soul is harmony: I doubt not but all these are in order"

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

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)