Date: 1791

"His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at once have snapt asunder."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1792

"Love sits triumphant on the heart--his throne! / And breaks those fetters bigots would impose, / To aggravate the sense of human woes!"

— Morton, Thomas (1764-1838)

Date: 1792

"Curs'd lethargy of the soul! ... that chain'd my better judgement, cramp'd all my strength of mind--ruin'd all my prospects."

— Tytler, Alexander Fraser (1747-1813); Schiller (1759-1805)

Date: 1792

"I should be a pitiful bungler indeed, if I knew not yet how to tear a son from the heart of his father, were they link'd together with chains of iron."

— Tytler, Alexander Fraser (1747-1813); Schiller (1759-1805)

Date: 1792

"Now that stern habit throws without controul / Her chain of adamant around thy soul / May not th' unhappy Abelard disclose / (To her who pities most) his train of woes?"

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: w. 1791-2

"But, sent from God, his presence leaves, / To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, / To call encumber'd souls away / From fleshly bonds to boundless day, / (As when the winged hours excite, / And summon forth the morning-light) / And each to convoy to her place / Before the Eternal Father's face."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1792

"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."

— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)

Date: 1792

"My passions must be, ought to be, and therefore shall be, under my control; and, being conscious of the purity of my own intentions, I have never thought that the emanations of mind ought to be shackled by the dread of their being misinterpreted."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1793

"The genuine and wholsome state of mind is, to be unloosed from shackles, and to expand every fibre of its frame according to the independent and individual impressions of truth upon that mind."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

The extirpation of error "frees us from the influence of those phantoms which before misled us, shows us our true advantage as consisting in independence and integrity, and binds us by the general consent of our fellow citizens to the dictates of reason, more strongly than with fetters of iron."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)