Date: 1790

"All the splendour of the highest prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the habit...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"The cistern contains: the fountain overflows / One thought, fills immensity."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: December 1790

"These lively conjectures are the breezes that preserve the still lake from stagnating"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1791

"Yes; Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"As in filling a vessel drop by dy drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. "

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"I cannot allow any fragment whatever that floats in my memory concerning the great subject of this work to be lost."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: February 1792

"It appears as if the tide of mental faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then forsook its course, and arose in others. How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow!"

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1792

"In this pause of intellect; this deliquium of the soul, an enthusiastic sensation of pleasure overspreads it, previous to any examination by the rules of art."

— Gilpin, William (1724-1804)

Date: 1792

"The leading ideas must be fixed on the spot: if left to the memory, they soon evaporate."

— Gilpin, William (1724-1804)