Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771

"Now as our Feet in vain venture to walk upon the River, till the Frost bind the Current, and harden the yielding Surface; so does the SOUL in vain seek to exert its higher Powers, the Powers I mean of REASON and INTELLECT, till IMAGINATION first fix the fluency of SENSE, and thus provide ...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The fire of the artist's own genius operating upon these materials which have been thus diligently collected, will enable him to make new combinations, perhaps, superior to what had ever before been in the possession of the Art. / / As in the mixture of the variety of metals, which are said to h...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of Art, he is possessed of that-presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great, and what is little; brings home knowledge from the East and from the West; making the universe tributary towards fu...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1782

The swell of pity may not be confined with "the scanty limits of the mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

Time is a river that fails to enrich the mind and "leaves a dreary waste behind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1788

"When Passion's tides thro' mans' strong art'ries roar, / His heart resists them like a flinty shore; / But our frail frames, like mould'ring banks, give way."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1789?

The "placid current" of the mind may be bestorm'd so that "th' ideal billows, raging, rise"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1789

"The third, / More absurd, / Than the iron-fed bird; / And whose brains lacked juice like an over-squeezed curd, / Had nothing of value to give but her--Word."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)