Date: 1787

"It is enough--my scruples are at an end--my prejudices, like clouds before the rising sun, vanish before the lights of your superior reason."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1788

"Within the heart which love illumes, / And blesses with his sacred rays, / If meaner passion e'er presumes, / It fades before the hallow'd blaze."

— Cobb, James (1756-1818)

Date: 1792

Light may break in and great ideas may dawn upon the mind

— Tytler, Alexander Fraser (1747-1813); Schiller (1759-1805)

Date: 1792

"That sweet enchantress ... Can give to Fancy's work a blaze more bright, / Or Reason's steady lamp feed with new light."

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

Date: 1799

"Oh thou, our Father above, who surveyest the whole world with one glance, diffuse thy light into our hearts!"

— Plumptre, Anne (1760-1818); Kotzebue (1761-1819)

Date: 1820

"Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim, / Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, / Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, / As light in the sun, throned."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"Ah woe! / Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever! / I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear / Thy works within my woe-illumèd mind, / Thou subtle tyrant!"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)