Date: 1777

"Not like a cloyster'd drone, to read and doze, / In undeserving, undeserv'd repose; / But reason's influence to diffuse; to clear / The enlighten'd world of every gloomy fear; / Dispel the mists of error, and unbind / Those pedant chains that clog the freeborn mind."

— Lyttleton, George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709-1773)

Date: 1777

"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"But I am persuaded, that scarce a poet is to be found, from Homer down to Dryden, who preserved a sound mind in a sound body, and continued practising his profession to the very last, whose later works are not as replete with the fire of imagination, as those which were produced in...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"To understand literally these metaphors or ideas expressed in poetical language, seems to be equally absurd as to conclude, that because painters sometimes represent poets writing from the dictates of a little winged boy or genius, that this same genius did really inform him in a whisper what he...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The natural appetite or taste of the human mind is for Truth; whether that truth results from the real agreement or equality of original ideas among themselves; from the agreement of the representation of any object with the thing represented; or from the correspondence of the several parts of a...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as great affinity as the different materials and the different organs or vehicles by which they pass to...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The same disposition, the same desire to find something steady, substantial and durable, on which the mind can lean as it were, and rest with safety. The subject only is changed."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The general objection which is made to philosophy's introduction into the regions of taste, is, that it checks and restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity which an over carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is likely to produce."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful operation is upon reflexion."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1777

"Her mind's a burning fire, / Where sudden thoughts, like wreaths of smoak arise, / And, parting from the flame, disperse in air."

— Home, John (1722-1808)