Date: 1792
"Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1793
"The genuine and wholsome state of mind is, to be unloosed from shackles, and to expand every fibre of its frame according to the independent and individual impressions of truth upon that mind."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
The extirpation of error "frees us from the influence of those phantoms which before misled us, shows us our true advantage as consisting in independence and integrity, and binds us by the general consent of our fellow citizens to the dictates of reason, more strongly than with fetters of iron."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"We put shackles upon our minds, and dare not trust ourselves at large in the pursuit of truth."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793, 1806
"Does Liberty with barbarous fetters bind / Her first-born hope, the freedom of the mind?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1793
"For what is sleep, but temporary death; / Sealing up all the windows of the soul, / And binding ev'ry thought in torpid chains?"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]
"Love to faults is always blind / Always is to joy inclind / Lawless wingd & unconfind / And breaks all chains from every mind."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: w. c. 1793? [in MS]
"Deceit to secresy confind / Lawful cautious & refind / To every thing but interest blind / And forges fetters for the mind."
preview | full record— Blake, William (1757-1827)
Date: 1793
"But, most of all, [the mind is subject] to that lov'd voice, whose thrill, / Rushing impetuous through each throbbing vein, / Dilates the wond'ring mind, and frees its pow'rs / From the cold chains of icy apathy / To all the vast extremes of bliss and pain!"
preview | full record— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)
Date: 1793
"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have i...
preview | full record— Hays, Mary (1760-1843)