Date: 1780
"There meet together, adultery, avarice, perjury, and every other vice; the soul is overwhelmed beneath them, and justice, modesty, and virtue are no more: bereft of these, the mind becomes dry and barren, or only teems with savage and brutal extravagance."
preview | full record— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)
Date: 1781
"In his 'Night Thoughts' he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1782
"If therefore the gloomy hemisphere of fact intrude a mournful prospect on the eye, at least we may travel the regions of imagination, where fancy's mirror can present clearer sunshine."
preview | full record— Dorset, Michael (fl. 1775-1782)
Date: 1782
"Were I poetically turned--what a glorious field for fancy flights--such as the blue-eyed Goddess with her flying carr--her doves and sparrows, &c. &c.--Alas! my imagination is as barren as the desert sands of Arabia."
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: April, 1783
"Let an Hypochondriack then have his park well stocked. Let him get as many agreeable ideas into his mind as he can; and though there may in wintery days seem: a total vacancy, yet when summer glows benignant, and the time of singing of birds is come, he will be delighted with gay colours and enc...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1783
"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1784
"The truth is, a depth of cunning that enables them to over-reach, conceal, deceive, is the only province of the mind left for them, as slaves, to occupy."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1784
"The minds of these, our fellow-creatures, that are now drowned in ignorance, being thus opened and improved, the pale of reason would be enlarged; Christianity would receive new strength; liberty new subjects."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1785
"In later ages, Des Cartes was the first that pointed out the road we ought to take in those dark regions [of the mind]."
preview | full record— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
Date: 1786
"From that awful period, almost every expectation is forlorn: the heart is left unguarded: its great protector is no more: the vices therefore, which so long encompassed it in vain, obtain an easy victory: in crouds they pour into the defenceless avenues, and take possession of the soul: there is...
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)