Date: December 1790
"The imperfection of all modern governments must, without waiting to repeat the trite remark, that all human institutions are unavoidably imperfect, in a great measure have arisen from this simple circumstance, that the constitution, if such an heterogeneous mass deserve that name, was settled in...
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
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
"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)
Date: 1794
"And as these irritative ideas make up a part of the chain of our waking thoughts, introducing other ideas that engage our attention, though themselves are unattended to, we find it very difficult to investigate by what steps many of our hourly trains of ideas gain their admittance."
preview | full record— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Date: 1796
"Camilla dissented not from the opinion; but the doctrine to which it was easy to agree, it was difficult to put in practice; and her ardent mind believed itself fettered for ever, and for ever unhappy."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1796
"Should he now, then, make her deem him exacting, and tenacious of prerogative? no; it might shackle the freedom of her mind in their future intercourse."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1796
"The speeches of the unsuspicious Eugenia, that a moment before would have past unheeded, now regaled her renovated fancy with a thousand amusing images, which so vigorously struggled against her sadness and her terrors, that they were soon nearly driven from the field by their sportive assailant...
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)