Date: 1727

"Inhaling spirit; from the unfetter'd mind, / By thee sublimed, down to the daily race, / The mixing myriads of thy setting beam."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

"Snatch'd by these wonders to that world where thought / Unfetter'd ranges, Fancy's magic hand / Led me anew o'er all the solemn scene, / Still in the mind's pure eye more solemn dress'd."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

"The Persian fetters, that inthrall'd the mind, / Were turn'd to formal and apparent chains."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

"Britons! be firm!--nor let corruption sly / Twine round your heart indissoluble chains!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1735-6

"The steel of Brutus burst the grosser bonds / By Cæsar cast o'er Rome; but still remain'd / The soft enchanting fetters of the mind, / And other Cæsars rose."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1754

"What is the juxta-position of ideas? what is that chain which connects, by intermediate ideas that are the links of it, ideas that are remote, but figurative stile?"

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: w. prior to April 1770; 1785, 1837, 1875

"Not yet contented with his boundless sway, / Which all perforce must outwardly obey, / He thought to throw his chain upon the mind; / Nor would he leave conjecture unconfined."

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

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)

Date: 1793

"We put shackles upon our minds, and dare not trust ourselves at large in the pursuit of truth."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)