Date: 1764

"To this cabinet volition, or will, has a key; so when an arduous subject occurs, I unlock my bureau, pull out the particular drawer, and am supply'd with what I want in an instant."

— Foote, Samuel (1720-1777)

Date: 1775

One may carry with him "all the flimsy furniture of a country Miss's brain"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1781

"Oh, I begin to take you--your days--the rusticated remains of a ruined Temple Critic--a smatterer of high life from the scenes of Cibber, which remain upon his imagination, as they do upon the stage, forty years after the real characters are lost"

— Burgoyne, John (1722-1792)

Date: 1782

"Have you shewn a jewel / Out of the cabinet of your rich mind / To lock it up again?"

— Dudley, Sir Henry Bate (1745-1824)

Date: 1793

"I must consider what's to be done--and in this room my thoughts are too confined to reflect."

— Inchbald [née Simpson], Elizabeth (1753-1821)

Date: 1795

"My brain was a broker's shop; the little good furniture it contained all hid by lumber!"

— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)

Date: 1796

"What an abominable thing is reading? by this means, the mind is put into a hot-house and forced like a pineapple in Europe; and then produces bad fruit."

— Anonymous; Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1796

"Alas! the door is locked and bolted, as the hearts of white men are."

— Anonymous; Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1796, 1806

"Ambition!--not that emulative zeal Which wings the tow'ring souls of godlike men! / But bold, oppressive, self-created pow'r, / That, trampling o'er the barrier of the laws, / And scattering wide the tender shoots of pity, / Strikes at the root of reason, and confines / Nature itself in bondage!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)