Date: 1793

"I must consider what's to be done--and in this room my thoughts are too confined to reflect."

— Inchbald [née Simpson], Elizabeth (1753-1821)

Date: 1793

"Flit, Galloway, and find / Some narrow, dirty, dungeon cave, / The picture of thy mind"

— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)

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?"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1794

"Five windows light the cavern'd Man"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1794

Reason once fairer than the light [has now been] fould in Knowledges dark Prison house

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1794

"My own mind is my own church."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"Every person of learning is finally his own teacher; the reason of which is, that principles, being of a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding, and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1795

"My brain was a broker's shop; the little good furniture it contained all hid by lumber!"

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1796, 1806

"Ambition!--not that emulative zeal Which wings the tow'ring souls of godlike men! / But bold, oppressive, self-created pow'r, / That, trampling o'er the barrier of the laws, / And scattering wide the tender shoots of pity, / Strikes at the root of reason, and confines / Nature itself in bondage!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1797

""But returning passion, like a wave that has recoiled from the shore, afterwards came with recollected energy, and swept from her feeble mind the barriers which reason and conscience had begun to rear."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)