Date: 1798

"Women have a frame of body more delicate and susceptible of impression than men, and, in proportion as they receive a less intellectual education, are more unreservedly under the empire of feeling."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1798

"Wounded affection, wounded pride, all those principles which hold absolute empire in the purest and loftiest minds, urged her to still further experiments to recover her influence, and to a still more poignant desparation, long after reason would have directed her to desist, and resolutely call ...

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1798

"But a connection more memorable originated about this time, between Mary and a person of her own sex, for whom she contracted a friendship so fervent, as for years to have constituted the ruling passion of her mind."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1710, 1714

"For let will be ever so free, humour and fancy, we see, govern it."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1710, 1714

"And here it is that our Sovereign Remedy and Gymnastick Method of Soliloquy takes its Rise: when by a certain powerful Figure of inward Rhetorick, the Mind apostrophizes its own Fancys, raises'em in their proper Shapes and Personages, and addresses 'em familiarly, without the least Ceremony or R...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1710, 1714

"Those on the side of the elder Brother Appetite, are strangely subtile and insinuating. They have always the Faculty to speak by Nods and Winks. By this practice they conceal half their meaning, and like modern Politicians pass for deeply wise, and adorn themselves with the finest Pretexts and m...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1729

"Oh, let not the soft, penetrating plague / Creep on the freeborn mind! and working there, / With the sharp tooth of many a new-form'd want, / Endless, and idle all, eat out the heart / Of liberty; the high conception blast; / The noble sentiment, the impatient scorn / Of base subjection, and the...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"Induced at last, by scarce perceived degrees, / Sapping the very frame of government, / And life, a total dissolution comes; / Sloth, ignorance, dejection, flattery, fear."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1729

"Then the good easy man, whom reason rules; / Rouz'd by bold insult, and injurious rage, / With sharp, and sudden check, th' astonish'd sons / Of violence confounds; firm as his cause, / His bolder heart; in awful justice clad; / His eyes effulging a peculiar fire: / And, as he charges thro' the ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

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)