Date: 1776

"Indeed, I fear Sir James is posting to destruction; the company he keeps must sink his mind as well as his fortune."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"The beautiful and sublime are here mingled in the superlative degree; the great Creator's works, unspoiled by art, rush on the mind, and fill it with delight and awe."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"Long has the idea wandered through my mind--Long have I languished for that peaceful haven, in which this tempest-beaten bark can only anchor."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1776

"A thousand wild vagaries now rushed into my troubled brain."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The general objection which is made to philosophy's introduction into the regions of taste, is, that it checks and restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity which an over carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is likely to produce."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful operation is upon reflexion."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1777

"The philosophical doctrine of the slow recession of bodies from the sun, is a lively image of the reluctance with which we first abandon the light of virtue."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"For it is in moral as in natural things, the motion in minds as well as bodies is accelerated by a nearer approach to the centre to which they are tending."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"But the heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)