Date: 1785

"The shifts and turns, / The expedients and inventions multiform / To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms / Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win,-- / To arrest the fleeting images that fill / The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, / And force them sit, till he has pencil'd off / ...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

The mind may be "enlighten'd from above"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"In thy mild rhetoric dwells a social love / Beyond my wild conceptions, optics false!/ Thro' which I falsely judg'd of polish'd life"

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: May 18, 1782, 1785

"Why is the countenance made a mask for the soul, when it should be a mirror, in which every eye might behold the true features of the mind, in the deformity of vice, or the loveliness of virtue!"

— Pilon, Frederick (1750-1788)

Date: 1785

"And in his [God's] ideas, as in a mirror, we perceive whatever we do perceive of the external world."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Modern Philosophers, as well as the Peripatetics and Epicureans of old, have conceived, that external objects cannot be the immediate objects of our thought; that there must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they are seen."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds bright enough to reflect it."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1786

"Young Fancy, oft in rainbow vest array'd, / Points to new scenes that in succession pass / Across the wond'rous mirror that she bears, / And bids thy unsated soul and wandering eye / A wider range o'er all her prospects take."

— Headley, Henry (1765-1788)

Date: w. 1782, 1786, 1816

"Having uttered this exclamation, Soliman raised his hands towards heaven, in token of supplication; and the Caliph discerned through his bosom, which was transparent as crystal, his heart enveloped in flames."

— Beckford, William (1760-1844)

Date: 1786

"There was a time when my feelings gave the lie to their assertions; and holding the mirror of fancy before my eyes, shew'd me the future, in the happy present."

— Lee, Harriet (1757/8-1851)