Date: 1799

"Nor seldom Indolence these lawns among / Fixes her turf-built seat; and wears the garb / Of deep philosophy, and museful sits, / In dreamy twilight of the vacant mind, / Soothed by the whispering shade; for soothing soft / The shades; and vistas lengthening into air, / With moonbeam rainbows ti...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1800

"Others, unemployed, were strolling to and fro, and testified to their vacancy of thought and care by humming or whistling a tune."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"My mind gradually expanded itself, as it were, for the reception of new ideas."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"The image of Achsa filled my fancy, but it was the harbinger of nothing but humiliation and sorrow."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1803

"But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill / My mind with treasure, led'st me far away / From city din to deep retreats, to banks / And streams Aonian, and, with free consent, / Didst place me happy at Apollo's side."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1814, 1816, 1896

"Thoughts, like Churl's corn, in chamber'd stores entomb'd, / Devour'd by vermin, or, decay, consum'd; / Whose fruits might food, or opulence, afford; / Enrich the Rich, or bless the poor Man's board."

— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)

Date: 1817

"When some bright thought has darted through my brain: / Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure / Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

Date: 1818

"I knew, I knew / There was a place untenanted in it: / In that same void white Chastity shall sit, / And monitor me nightly to lone slumber"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

Date: 1818

"Catherine's mind was too full, as she entered the house, for her either to observe or to say a great deal; and, till called on by the General for her opinion of it, she had very little idea of the room in which she was sitting."

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

Date: 1818, 1859

"Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cau...

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)