Date: 1765

"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"

— Merrick, James (1720-1769)

Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in the possession of the Art. / / As in the mixture of the variety of metals, which are said to h...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of Art, he is possessed of that-presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great, and what is little; brings home knowledge from the East and from the West; making the universe tributary towards fu...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1774

"A parcel of warm hearts and inexperienced heads, heated by convivial mirth, and possibly a little too much wine, vow, and really mean at the time, eternal friendships to each other, and indiscreetly pour out their whole souls in common, and without the least reserve."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1788

"In their frequent conversation, she observed that the very name of Emmeline had the power of fascination; that he was never weary of hearing her praises; and that whenever he thought himself unobserved, his eyes were in pursuit of her; or fondly gazing on her face, he seemed to drink deep draugh...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1820

"And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned / In an ocean of dreams without a sound; / Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress / The light sand which paves it, consciousness"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1824

"What do I say--a mirror of my heart? / Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? / Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; / And such as thou art were my passions long."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)