Date: 1770

"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1770

"Excursive thought" may "Stand still a moment, and by reason taught / Judge rightly, with strict eye thyself survey"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1770

A passion may blind the soul

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: 1770

"I could not look upon his mangled corse: / I saw his mangled corse in my mind's eye."

— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)

Date: 1770

"Take HIM ye wretched for your only good; / Take HIM ye starving souls to be your food."

— Wheatley, Phillis (c.1753–1784)

Date: 1771

"Now as our Feet in vain venture to walk upon the River, till the Frost bind the Current, and harden the yielding Surface; so does the SOUL in vain seek to exert its higher Powers, the Powers I mean of REASON and INTELLECT, till IMAGINATION first fix the fluency of SENSE, and thus provide ...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'Fancy enervates, while it sooths, the heart, / 'And, while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight: / 'To joy each heightening charm it can impart, / 'But wraps the hour of wo in tenfold night."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771

"That is, let not great examples, or authorities, browbeat they reason into too great a diffidence fo thyself: thyself so reverence, as to prefer the native growth of thy own mind to the richest import from abroad; such borrowed riches make us poor."

— Author Unknown

Date: 1772-1781

"Fond Fancy's eye, / That inly gives locality and form / To what she prizes best, full oft pervades / Those hidden caverns, where pale chrysolites, / And glittering spars dart a mysterious gleam / Of inborn lustre, from the garish day / Unborrow'd."

— Mason, William (1725-1797)