Date: 1785

"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"He that attends to his interior self, [...] Has business; feels himself engaged to achieve / No unimportant, though a silent task."

— 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: June, 1788

"Minds are never to be sold"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1791

Gods are "swift as the traveller's thought"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1791

"But when the Gods with evils unforeseen / Smite him, he bears them with a grudging mind; / For such as the complexion of his lot / By the appointment of the Sire of all, Such is the colour of the mind of man."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1791

The mind may be haunted by a thought

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1791

A thought may occupy and haunt the mind

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1791

"and my mother's mind / In doubtful balance hangs, if still with me / An inmate, she shall manage my concerns, / Attentive only to her absent Lord / And her own good report"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)