Date: 1787

"But his imagination [Ignatius Sancho's] is wild and extravagant, escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric, as is the course of a meteor through the sky."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: w. 1796, 1799

"Notwithstanding the law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."

— Osborn, Sarah (1714-1796)

Date: September 10, 1836

"And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the type of Reason."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: September 10, 1836

"In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?"

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: September 10, 1836

"Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

The world's "attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"A strange process too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, -- this he shall hear and promulgate."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"The unstable estimates of men crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of the Atlantic follow the moon."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)