Date: 1775

"In the wildest flights of fancy, it is probable that no single idea occurs to us but such as had a connection with some other impression or idea, previously existing in the mind."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1792

"A thousand ideas seemed crowding upon my mind; but they have expelled each other as quickly as they came, and I scarcely know what to add."

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1794

"At the same time that our young performer continues to play with great exactness this accustomed tune, she can bend her mind, and that intensely, on some other object, according with the fourth article of the preceding propositions."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

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)

Date: 1798

"In a robust and unwavering judgment of this sort, there is a kind of witchcraft; when it decides justly, it produces a responsive vibration in every ingenuous mind."

— 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: 1799

"My meditations had been ardently pursued, and, when I recalled my attention, I found myself bewildered among fields and fences."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1799

"My thoughts flowed with tumult and rapidity."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

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)