Date: 1796
"Some hurt themselves by flippant WIT, / As too much GAS, balloons will split;-- / With buoyant splendour, up they rise, / The spirit bursts, the bubble dies."
preview | full record— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)
Date: 1796
"The effect [of wit on the mind] is strong,--because it's odd, / Like fire electric from a clod; / Or when fix'd air puts out a light, / Tho' vital makes it blaze more bright."
preview | full record— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)
Date: 1798
"Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings; and the feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1799
"His emotion seemed to communicate itself, with an electrical rapidity, to my heart."
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)
Date: 1800
Thoughts may be kept in "perpetual motion"
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)
Date: 1800
"A sort of electrical sympathy pervaded my companion, and terror and anguish were strongly manifested in the glances which she sometimes stole at me."
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)