Date: 1779

"If one spark of virtue / Yet hovers in his mind--Oh, grant me, Heaven! / To kindle it afresh, and be the flame immortal!"

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1779-1780, 1781

"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: January 1, 1779

"There [to Heaven's Regions] when the soul, in search of purer day, / Loos'd from mortality's impris'ning clay / Shall swifter than the forked lightning dart."

— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)

Date: 1779

"Darting like hidden sun-beams on my mind, / And make it drunk with bliss."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1777, 1780

"The father, by his wholesome advice, comforted his drooping heart, and confirmed him in his resolution of bearing unavoidable evils with patience and fortitude, from the consciousness of his own innocence, and the assurance of a future and eternal reward."

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1777, 1780

"Afterwards he walked into the garden, revolving in his mind the peculiarity of his situation, and the uncertainty of his future prospects; lost in thought, he walked to and fro in a covered walk, with his arms crossed and his eyes cast down, without perceiving that he was observed by two females...

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1777, 1780

"As soon as they were ready, my Lord wished him a good journey, and gave him a letter for his mother. He departed without saying a word, in a sullen kind of resentment, but his countenance shewed the inward agitations of his mind."

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1781, 1791

"Hence rash Belief! may thy wild thoughts again / Ne'er thro the cells of busy fancy rove!"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1782

"Cecilia, too much astonished for speech, stood for some time immoveable, revolving in her mind various conjectures upon the meaning of an exhortation so strange and so urgent."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)