Date: w. prior to April 1770; 1785, 1837, 1875

"The groves of Kew, however misapplied / To serve the purposes of lust and pride, / Were, by the greater monarch's care, designed / A place of conversation for the mind; / Where solitude and silence should remain, / And conscience keep her sessions and arraign."

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

Date: w. 1769, 1784

"Happy (if Mortals can be) is the Man, / Who, not by Priest but Reason, rules his span:"

— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)

Date: 1789, 1791, 1799

"Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, / Inexorable Conscience holds his court"

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: February 1791

"It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos, but it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution priorily existing in France."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1793

"Law may be supposed to have been constructed in the tranquil serenity of the soul, a suitable monitor to check the inflamed mind with which the recent memory of ills might induce us to proceed to the exercise of coercion"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"The present ruling passion of the human mind is the love of distinction. "

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"The equalisation we are describing is farther indebted for its empire in the mind to the ideas with which it is attended of personal happiness."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"If mind be now in a great degree the ruler of the system, why should it be incapable of extending its empire?"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"the selfish are not governed solely by sensual gratification or the love of gain, but that the desire of eminence and distinction is in different degrees an universal passion"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Reason is the only legislator, and her decrees are irrevocable and uniform."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)