Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)

Date: 1773

"But reasoning with a man under the influence of any passion is like endeavouring to stop a wild horse, who becomes more violent from being pursued."

— Graves, Richard (1715-1804)

Date: 1775, 1776

"'Let Meekness as a dove / 'Brood in man's heart the sacred acts of Love."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1779

"Sorrow may well possess the mind / That feeds where thorns and thistles grow"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

Reveries are "flimsy webs that break as soon as wrought" and don't attain "to the dignity of thought"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

The mind may slumber sweetly in vice's snares, her "polish'd neck" bent beneath tyranny's "usurp'd command"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"His passions tamed and all at his control, / How perfect the composure of his soul!"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"Peace of mind" is a delightful guest that may make its "downy nest" in a "sad heart"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1789

"'Tis [the letter of the law] the birdlime of reason to fasten our senses."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)