Date: 1777

"I retire to the family of my own thoughts, and find them in weeds of sorrow."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[T]here is, methinks, a languor in your last letter--or is it but the livery of my own imagination, which the objects around me are constrained to wear?"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1773, 1778

"The Passions there embody'd throng, / On mental Pinions, swift, and strong, / In Robes array'd of various Fire"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

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: 1780

"Ten thousand terrors now besieg'd her soul; / Ten thousand nothings, which her fancy drest / In colour, substance, circumstance, and form."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1781

"So that all material objects, in themselves, and to each other, are dark and naked: to the mind alone are they cloathed in all the pleasing variety of sensible qualities."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"Mind, like a bride from a nobler family, enriches matter by its union, and brings as a dower, possessions before unknown. Henceforth matter appears cloathed in a gayer and richer garment; and the fruits of this union are a new progeny, to which matter, confining its alliance to its own family, c...

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1782

"Alas! there are some stupid souls, formed of such phlegmatic, adverse materials, that you might sooner strike conception into a flannel petticoat--or out of one--(now keep your temper I beg, sweet Sir) than convince their simple craniums that six and seven makes thirteen."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

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)