Date: 1776-1789

"Without that artificial help the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas entrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers: the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid o...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1777

"But it is their nature never to observe a neutrality; they are either rebels or auxiliaries, and an enemy subdued is an ally obtained."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1781

"Mind, like a bride from a nobler family, enriches matter by its union, and brings as a dower, possessions before unknown. Henceforth matter appears cloathed in a gayer and richer garment; and the fruits of this union are a new progeny, to which matter, confining its alliance to its own family, c...

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"Which, like a skilful artist, goes to work upon the materials furnished by the senses; comparing selecting, analysing, and abstracting; till by placing them in different points of view their fitness, relations, and dependencies are seen."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1785

"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"

— Paley, William (1743-1805)

Date: 1786

"From that awful period, almost every expectation is forlorn: the heart is left unguarded: its great protector is no more: the vices therefore, which so long encompassed it in vain, obtain an easy victory: in crouds they pour into the defenceless avenues, and take possession of the soul: there is...

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)

Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1792

"No, no! The agonised heart will cry with suffocating impatience--I, too, am a man! and have vices hid perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the dust before God, and loudly tell me, when all is mute, that we are formed of the same earth, and breathe the same element."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)