Date: 1709, 1714

"The Specter still will haunt us, in some Shape or other: and when driven from our cool Thoughts, and frighted from the Closet, will meet us even at Court, and fill our Heads with Dreams of Grandure, Titles, Honours, and a false Magnificence and Beauty; to which we are ready to sacrifice our high...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1710, 1714

"As cruel a Court as the Inquisition appears; there must, it seems, be full as formidable a one, erected in our-selves; if we wou'd pretend to that Uniformity of Opinion which is necessary to hold us to one Will, and preserve us in the same Mind, from one day to another."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1745

"Tho' practis'd long in Courts, / I have not so far learn'd their subtle Trade, / To veer obedient with each Gust of Passion."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1789, 1791, 1799

"Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, / Inexorable Conscience holds his court"

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1794

"[T]he thing in which my imagination revelled the most freely, was the analysis of the private and internal operations of the mind, employing my metaphysical dissecting knife in tracing and laying bare the involutions of motive, and recording the gradually accumulating impulses."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"The slightest breath of dishonour would have stung him to the very soul"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"Mr. Falkland's mind was full of uproar like the war of contending elements"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"There was a magnetical sympathy between me and my patron"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

I may act "in obedience to the principle which at present governed me with absolute dominion"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1794

"I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not the power immediately to suspend the career of my reflections"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)