Date: January 19, 1791

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1791

"His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at once have snapt asunder."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1792

"Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793

"The genuine and wholsome state of mind is, to be unloosed from shackles, and to expand every fibre of its frame according to the independent and individual impressions of truth upon that mind."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

The extirpation of error "frees us from the influence of those phantoms which before misled us, shows us our true advantage as consisting in independence and integrity, and binds us by the general consent of our fellow citizens to the dictates of reason, more strongly than with fetters of iron."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"We put shackles upon our minds, and dare not trust ourselves at large in the pursuit of truth."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have i...

— Hays, Mary (1760-1843)

Date: 1794

"And as these irritative ideas make up a part of the chain of our waking thoughts, introducing other ideas that engage our attention, though themselves are unattended to, we find it very difficult to investigate by what steps many of our hourly trains of ideas gain their admittance."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1796

"Camilla dissented not from the opinion; but the doctrine to which it was easy to agree, it was difficult to put in practice; and her ardent mind believed itself fettered for ever, and for ever unhappy."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1796

"Should he now, then, make her deem him exacting, and tenacious of prerogative? no; it might shackle the freedom of her mind in their future intercourse."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)