Date: 1782

"Were I poetically turned--what a glorious field for fancy flights--such as the blue-eyed Goddess with her flying carr--her doves and sparrows, &c. &c.--Alas! my imagination is as barren as the desert sands of Arabia."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: April, 1783

"Let an Hypochondriack then have his park well stocked. Let him get as many agreeable ideas into his mind as he can; and though there may in wintery days seem: a total vacancy, yet when summer glows benignant, and the time of singing of birds is come, he will be delighted with gay colours and enc...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: October, 1784

"Every man may learn the elements of geography, which is the noblest science in the world, from an attention to the temperature of his own mind."

— Anonymous

Date: 1784

"The truth is, a depth of cunning that enables them to over-reach, conceal, deceive, is the only province of the mind left for them, as slaves, to occupy."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1784

"The minds of these, our fellow-creatures, that are now drowned in ignorance, being thus opened and improved, the pale of reason would be enlarged; Christianity would receive new strength; liberty new subjects."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1785

"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"In later ages, Des Cartes was the first that pointed out the road we ought to take in those dark regions [of the mind]."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1786

"From that awful period, almost every expectation is forlorn: the heart is left unguarded: its great protector is no more: the vices therefore, which so long encompassed it in vain, obtain an easy victory: in crouds they pour into the defenceless avenues, and take possession of the soul: there is...

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)