Date: 1794

"When we are suddenly awaked by any violent stimulus, the surprise totally disunites the trains of our sleeping ideas from these of our waking ones; but if we gradually awake, this does not happen; and we readily unravel the preceding trains of imagination."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1798

"A woman, with sentiments as pure, as refined, and as delicate, as ever inhabited a human heart!"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: February, 1798

"And what (I said) tho' blasphemy's loud scream / With that sweet music of deliv'rance strove; / Tho' all the fierce and drunken passions wove / A dance more wild than ever maniac's dream; / Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled, / The sun was rising, tho' ye hid his light!"

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1820

"Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne / In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer, / And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, / Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Yet am I king over myself, and rule / The torturing and conflicting throngs within, / As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1831

"The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the 'stranger at home.'"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1831

"On set occasions and at appropriate times we examine our stores, and ascertain the various commodities we have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. Like the governor of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take acc...

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"They may have perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as fragments and isolated portions: those who are more finely organized, or born in a happier age, may recognize them as episodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have ...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"And the world would have fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found poets among the authors of the Christian and chivalric systems of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action never before conceived; which, copied into the imaginations of men, became as...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)