Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"From the wise be far / Such gross unhallow'd pride; nor needs my song / Descend so low; but rather now unfold, / If human thought could reach, or words unfold, / By what mysterious fabric of the mind, / The deep-felt joys and harmony of sound / Result from airy motion; and from shape / The lovel...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: Tuesday, July 3, 1750

"There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others, are very often successful in deceiving themselves; they weave their sophistry till their own reason is entangled, and repeat their positions till they are credited by themselves."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1774

"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...

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

Date: 1777

"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: 1785

"I was surpriz'd, taken unawares, passion ran away with me like an unbroke horse: but I have got him under now; I can govern him with a twine of thread."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1785

"Threads of politic and shrewd design" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from "the puzzled skein"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)