Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Not so the moral species, nor the powers / Of genius and design; the ambitious mind / There sees herself: by these congenial forms / Touch'd and awaken'd, with intenser act / She bends each nerve, and meditates well-pleas'd / Her features in the mirror."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Thus he learns / Their birth and fortunes; how allied they haunt / The avenues of sense; what laws direct / Their union; and what various discords rise, / Or fix'd or casual: which when his clear thought / Retains and when his faithful words express, / That living image of the external scene, / ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1750

"A mind in wisdom old, in lenience young, / From fervent truth where every virtue sprung; / Where all was real, modest, plain, sincere; / Worth above show, and goodness unsevere: / View'd round and round, as lucid diamonds throw / Still as you turn them a revolving glow, / So did his mind reflect...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1751

"There are few among Mankind, who have not been often struck with Admiration at the Sight of that Variety of Colours and Magnificence of Form, which appear in an Evening Rainbow. The uninstructed in Philosophy consider that splendid Object, not as dependent on any other, but as being possessed of...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1775

A new light may break in upon someone

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1814

"All, in a word, from which all eyes must start, / That opening sepulchre, the naked heart / Bares with its buried woes--till Pride awake, / To snatch the mirror from the soul, and break."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: March 30, 1816

"Look on her features! and behold her mind / As in a mirror of itself defined."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1823

"Retire: but look into your past impression! / And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror / Of your own thoughts, in all their self confession, / The lurking bias, be it truth or error, / To the unknown."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1824

"What if thy deep and ample stream should be / A mirror of my heart, where she may read / The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

Date: 1824

"What do I say--a mirror of my heart? / Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? / Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; / And such as thou art were my passions long."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)