Date: 1775

"To lessen this difficulty a little, let it be considered how exceedingly different, to the eye of the mind, as we may say, are our ideas of sensible things from any thing that could have been conjectured concerning their effect upon us."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"To account for the idea of time, it appears to me to be sufficient to attend to a few well known facts, viz. that impressions made by external objects remain a certain space of time in the mind, that this time is different according to the strength, and other circumstances of the impression, and...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"If I look upon a house, and then shut my eyes, the impression it has made upon my mind does not immediately vanish."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776

"Yet in such pursuits great moderation is requisite, lest the mind too freely rove, and idly indulge itself in the airy wilds of fancy, to the neglect of real science and useful improvement."

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"In short, he ranges, with curious attention, through the wide regions of truth; noting the different steps, that lead to it, by converging lines, and carefully distinguishing the false lights of fancy or passion from the cooler investigations of the reasoning faculties."

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"If you really then think that, every process, termed mental, in man, is in fact nothing more than so many distinct nervous vibrations, then I readily grant that matter may think, for undoubtedly every stretched cord, when touched, will vibrate; and I will farther grant, that a fiddle, in that se...

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: w. 1805

"Call we this / But a persuasion taken up by Thee / In friendship; yet the mind is to herself / Witness and judge, and I remember well / That in life's every-day appearances / I seem'd about this period to have sight / Of a new world, a world, too, that was fit / To be transmitted and made visibl...

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: w. 1805

"But all the meditations of mankind, / Yea, all the adamantine holds of truth, / By reason built, or passion, which itself / Is highest reason in a soul sublime; / The consecrated works of Bard and Sage, / Sensuous or intellectual, wrought by men, / Twin labourers and heirs of the same hopes, / W...

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: w. 1805

"Oh! why hath not the mind / Some element to stamp her image on / In nature somewhat nearer to her own?"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: w. 1805

"Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad / Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)