Date: 1751, 1791

"The mirrour, faithful to its charge, / Reflects the virgin's soul in large."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

Date: 1752

"[H]er Vanity therefore retreated into her Mind, where there is no Looking-Glass, and consequently where we can flatter ourselves with discovering almost whatever Beauties we pleas"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1752

Behavior is the optic glass that makes visible what passes in the mind

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Tuesday, October 2, 1753

"It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which put the world i...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"Solitude now was all he sought, and dismissing his Companions, on Pretence of private Business, he retired to his Chamber to indulge his new Meditations, there making a Mirror of his Mind, he contemplated the Image of the beauteous Cressida; his raptured Fancy dwelt upon the inchanting Look she ...

— Lennox, née Ramsay, (Barbara) Charlotte (1730/1?-1804)

Date: 1754

"But memory will never present ideas to the human mind, as it does perhaps to superior intelligences, like objects in a mirror, where they may be viewed at every instant, all at once, without effort or toil, in their original freshness, and with their original precision, such as they were when th...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1746, 1757

"Yet tho' to human Sight invisible, / If She, whom I implore, Urania deign, / With Euphrasy to purge away the Mists / Which, humid, dim the Mirror of the Mind; / (As Venus gave Æneas to behold / The angry Gods with Flame o'erwhelming Troy, / Neptune and Pallas,) not in vain, I'll sing / The mysti...

— Thompson, William (bap. 1712, d.c. 1766)

Date: 1757

"Behold, thro' fancy's mirrour, what a scene / The phantom opens, ample, wide, and fair, / Each golden minute, bearing as it flies / Imaginary raptures on its wing; / Flatt'ring my fond deluded heart with dreams / Of lasting pleasure--but alas, how soon / This fairy Eden to a waste is turn'd?"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: 1759

"A Genius implies the rays of the mind concenter'd, and determined to some particular point; when they are scatter'd widely, they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force, to fire, or dissolve, the heart."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1753, 1759, 1770

"But still in Fancy's mirror sees / Some more romantic scene would please, / There within a nook most dark, / Where none my musing mood may mark, / Let me, in many a whisper'd rite, / The Genius old of Greece invite, / With that fair wreath my brows to bind, / Which for his chosen imps he twin'd,...

— Warton, Thomas, the younger (1728-1790)