Date: 1693

"Yet, thy moist Clay is pliant to Command; / Unwrought, and easie to the Potter's hand: / Now take the Mold; now bend thy Mind to feel / The first sharp Motions of the Forming Wheel."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1737

"As in the greater World, aspiring Flame, / Earth, Water, Air, make the material Frame: / And thro' the Members a commanding Soul / Infus'd, directs the Motion of the Whole: / So 'tis in Man, the lesser World: the Case / Is Clay, unactive, and an earthly Mass: / But the Blood's Streams the ruli...

— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)

Date: 1739

"More hard than Marble is my Heart, / And foul with Sins of deepest Stain: / But Thou the mighty Saviour art, / Nor flow'd thy cleansing Blood in vain. / Ah! soften, melt this Rock, and may / Thy Blood wash all these Stains away."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1761

"Did not your master Plato maintain, that all the art of man, that all philosophy could not extract from the human mind what nature had not implanted there; as all the operations in chemistry are incapable of extracting from any mixture more gold than is already contained in it?"

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1799

"Ignorance has set her stamp upon him--his mind seared to every virtuous impression--his heart flint, and his temper moved by the slightest breath"

— West, Matthew (d. 1814); Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1817

"But he, the bard of every age and clime, / Of genius fruitful, ardent and sublime, / Who, from the glowing mint of fancy, pours / No spurious metal, fused from common ores, / But gold, to matchless purity refined, / And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind."

— Gifford, William (1756-1826)