Date: 1786

The infant mind may (and should) be fed with "proper fare"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

The growing mind needs better nourishment than "conjugated verbs" and "nouns declined"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

The soul controls "the state, the splendour and the throne, / An intellectual kingdom, all her own"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

One may steal "The gem of truth from his unguarded soul"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"The stamp of artless piety impress'd / By kind tuition on his yielding breast"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

Vile example may be stamped on the breast

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"Dismiss their cares when they dismiss their flock, / Machines themselves, and govern'd by a clock."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"A man endowed with this faculty, feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and bring present before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion; for very many and very intricate considerations, m...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"If this be not done, the Artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning, by a cold consideration of those animated first thoughts which proceeded, not perhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit) but from the fullness of his mind, enriched with all the copious sto...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)