Date: 1754

"My brother, tho' in the main, above singularity, will, nevertheless, in things he thinks right, be govern'd by his own rules, which are the laws of reason and convenience."

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

Date: 1754

"Let [my love] be evermore circumscribed by the laws of reason, of duty"

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

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: 1754

"How often has that tender bosom, whose glory it would have been to melt at another's woe, and to rejoice in acts of kindness and benevolence to her fellow-creatures, been armed by herself (not the mistress, but the slave, of her passions) not with defensive, but offensive, steel!"

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

Date: 1754

"How often has that tender bosom, whose glory it would have been to melt at another's woe, and to rejoice in acts of kindness and benevolence to her fellow-creatures, been armed by herself ... not with defensive, but offensive, steel"

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

Date: 1754

"Mr. Locke, who has made a more exact dissection of the human mind than any man before him, declares he gained all his knowledge from consideration of himself."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1754

"My heart is too big for its prison, putting her hand to it: It wants room, methinks"

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

Date: 1754

"She had from her chamber-window been shot through the heart by the blind archer, who took his stand on the feather of a military man marching at the head of his company through the market-town in which she lived"

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

Date: 1754

"[I]f Knowledge had broke in upon [Adam] too fast, it would have overwhelm'd, and depress'd him; so that, as in the Case of some intolerable Load laid upon the Body, his Mind must have sunk under the Weight of it"

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)