Date: 1794

"It [Christianity] has put the whole orbit of reason into shade."

— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)

Date: 1794

"Reason is God's candle in man. But, as a candle must first be lighted, ere it will enlighten; so reason must be illuminated by divine grace, ere it can savingly discern spiritual things."

— Toplady, Augustus (1740-1771)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"But this obscurity sometimes proceeds from a mixture of light and darkness in the author's mind; from a partial ray which strikes upon an angle, instead of spreading itself over the surface of an object."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1796

"Edgar, to whom the sun-beams of the mind gave a glow which not all the sparkling rays of the brightest eyes could emit, respected her modesty too highly to combat it, and, dropping the subject, enquired what was become of Eugenia."

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

Date: 1817

"The wise Stagyrite speaks of no successive particles propagating motion like billiard balls (as Hobbs;) nor of nervous or animal spirits, where inanimate and irrational solids are thawed down, and distilled, or filtrated by ascension, into living and intelligent fluids, that etch and re-etch eng...

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1817

"In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure...

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1823

"This was the thought--the sentiment--the bright solitary star of your lives,--ye mild and happy pair--which cheered you in the night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station!"

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1830

"But mind is not merely this abstractly simple being equivalent to light, which was how it was considered when the simplicity of the soul in contrast to the composite nature of the body was under discussion."

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1830

"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, t...

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1831

"It is therefore in this way that a preceptor, by undertaking to enlighten the mind of his pupil, enlightens his own."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)