Date: 1785

Virtue is like a "lowly creeping, modest and yet fair" plant that thrives most "where little seen"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Man in society is like a flower: "'Tis there alone / His faculties expanded in full bloom/ Shine out"

— 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: December 10, 1790; 1791

"It is an absurdity therefore to suppose we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds of it, which by the heat and kindly influence of his genius, may be ripened in us."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1937

"Make [her mind], as a garden gay, / Every bud of thought display, / Till, improving year by year, / The whole culture shall appear,"

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)