Date: 1785

"I tread his deck, / Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes / Discover countries, with a kindred heart / Suffer his woes and share in his escapes, / While fancy, like the finger of a clock, / Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"He appears to me like a great mill, into which a subject is thrown to be ground. It requires, indeed, fertile minds to furnish materials for this mill. I regret whenever I see it unemployed; but sometimes I feel myself quite barren, and having nothing to throw in. I know not if this mill be a go...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1786

"Dismiss their cares when they dismiss their flock, / Machines themselves, and govern'd by a clock."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1788

"With horns, and tail, and hoofs that make folks start; / And in my breast a millstone for a heart!"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1789

"For of calamity so long the prey, / Imagination now has lost her powers, / Nor will her fairy loom again essay / To dress affliction in a robe of flowers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"Hope and fear are the two grand springs by which that curious machine, the human mind, is actuated; and to deprive Virtue of that support which she receives from their influence and operation, and to substitute in their room a sense of honour, or a love of moral beauty and order, is to betray th...

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)

Date: 1790

"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1792

"For it is seldom done entirely, to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the gradual improvement."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793

"It was from a view of this truth that the poets derived their fictions respecting the early history of mankind; well aware that, when luxury was introduced and the springs of mind unbent, it would be a vain expectation that should hope to recal men from passion to reason, and from effeminacy to ...

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)