Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"Expression is the dress of thought, and still / Appears more decent, as more suitable."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanicks, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1783

"For although words and thoughts are different things (as appears from this, that deaf men think, who know nothing of words) yet words are, as it were, the dress, or the guise, in which our thoughts present themselves"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)