Date: 1762-3

"Opinions should be free as air; / No man, whate'er his rank, what're / His qualities, a claim can found / That my opinion must be bound, / And square with his; such slavish chains / From foes the liberal soul disdains; / Nor can, though true to friendship, bend / To wear them even from a friend."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762

"Ils sont sourds, en effet, à la voix intérieure qui leur crie d’un ton difficile à méconnaître: Une machine ne pense point, il n’y a ni mouvement, ni figure qui produise la réflexion: quelque chose en toi cherche à briser les liens qui le compriment; l’espace n’est pas ta mesure, l’univers entie...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1762

"Pourquoi mon âme est-elle soumise à mes sens & enchaîné, ce corps qui l’asservit et la gêne? je n’en sais rien: suis-je entré dans les décrets de Dieu?"

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1762

J’aspire au moment où, délivré des entraves du corps, je serai moi sans contradiction, sans partage, & n’aurai besoin que de moi pour être heureux; en attendant, je le suis dès cette vie, parce que j’en compte pour peu tous les maux, que je la regarde comme presque étrangère à mon être, & que tou...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1762

"Ne’er did thy Voice assume a Master’s Pow’r, / Nor force Assent to what thy Precepts taught; / But bid my independent Spirit soar, / In all the Freedom of unfett’red Thought"

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1762, 1868

"Hasten, Lord, the day of rest / From this indwelling sin, / Vindicate Thy church oppress'd, / And still enslaved within; / Burst our bonds, and let us go / From every thought of evil freed, / Pure in heart, and saints below, / And like our sinless Head."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1763

"O'er crabbed authors life's gay prime to waste, / To clamp wild genius in the chains of taste, / To bear the slavish drudgery of schools, / And tamely stoop to ev'ry pedant's rules."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Doth Virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, / Or from a Spring more pure doth Action flow? / Is not thy Soul bound with those very chains / Which shackle us, or is that SELF, which reigns / O'er Kings and Beggars, which in all we see / Most strong and sov'reign, only weak in Thee?"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Unwilling to condemn, thy soul disdains / To wear vile faction's arbitrary chains."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1764?

"This melting mass of flesh she may control / With iron ribs, she cannot chain my soul."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)