Date: 1785

"The mind of man can bear a certain pressure; but there is a point when it can bear no more."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong: it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships, to weigh a guinea. I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1786

"His poverty, his hapless helpless irremediable poverty he justly considers as the cause of this consummation of human woe! his mind is alternately torn with the passions of grief and despondence, when he sees even the probability extinguished of having his health re-established!"

— Nolan, William (fl. 1786)

Date: 1786

"For, as the state of heat, in metallic substances, is the state wherein they are made capable to assume new or beautiful forms, so the state of affliction is the state to mould the human mind to every pursuit that is congenial to the dignity of its nature."

— Nolan, William (fl. 1786)

Date: 1787

"But his imagination [Ignatius Sancho's] is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1789

"We have already hinted, that for the same, or similar reasons, none of the ordinary organs of sense are qualified to receive or communicate distinct impressions, till the brain, the common emporium of them all, has acquired those properties which must fit it for its arduous offices; and, as in t...

— Couper, Robert (1750-1818)

Date: 1789

"Are there not causes enough to which the apparent inferiority of an African may be ascribed, without limiting the goodness of God, and supposing he forbore to stamp understanding on certainly his own image, because 'carved in ebony.'"

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1789

"They [African customs] had been implanted in me with great care, and made an impression on my mind, which time could not erase, and which all the adversity and variety of fortune I have since experienced served only to rivet and record; for, whether the love of one's country be real or imaginary...

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1789

"Though you were early forced from my arms, your image has been always rivetted in my heart, from which neither time nor fortune have been able to remove it; so that, while the thoughts of your sufferings have damped my prosperity, they have mingled with adversity and increased its bitterness."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: December 10, 1788; 1789

"Sometimes indeed it happens, that he may be able to mark the time, when from the sight of a picture, a passage in an author, or a hint in conversation, he has received, as it were, some new and guiding light, something like inspiration, by which his mind has been expanded, and is morally sure th...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)