Date: March 29, 1785; 1793

"Do, mother, put your hand upon my heart, it springs like a bird in my breast with joy."

— Pilon, Frederick (1750-1788)

Date: 1785

"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Besides, so great a mind as his cannot be moved by inferior objects: an elephant does not run and skip like lesser animals."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"I was surpriz'd, taken unawares, passion ran away with me like an unbroke horse: but I have got him under now; I can govern him with a twine of thread."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1786

"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1787

"Your heavy fat, I will maintain, / Is perfect birdlime of the brain; / And, as to goldfinches the birdlime clings-- / Fat holds ideas by the legs and wings."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1787

"Fat flattens the most brilliant thoughts, / Like the buff-stop on harpsichords, or spinets-- / Muffling their pretty little tuneful throats, / That would have chirp'd away like linnets."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1788

"What glittering adders lurk to sting the mind!"

— Richardson, Joseph (1755-1803)

Date: 1788

"Thou, who, for noble faults like these, too cold, / Whose vices n'er aspire, but stoop to gold, / That groveling passion of the sordid breast, / Like Aaron's serpent swallowing up the rest."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1788

"Who for such perishable gaudes would put / A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit, / And gall himself with trammels and the rubs / Of this world's business; so he might stand clear / Of judgment and the tax of idleness / In that dread audit, when his mortal hours / (Which now with soft and silent ...

— Crowe, William (1745-1829)