Date: 1796

"Some hurt themselves by flippant WIT, / As too much GAS, balloons will split;-- / With buoyant splendour, up they rise, / The spirit bursts, the bubble dies."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"The effect [of wit on the mind] is strong,--because it's odd, / Like fire electric from a clod; / Or when fix'd air puts out a light, / Tho' vital makes it blaze more bright."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1798

"Moral reasoning is nothing but the awakening of certain feelings; and the feeling by which he is actuated, is too strong to leave us much chance of impressing him with other feelings, that should have force enough to counterbalance it."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1798

"Objects or thoughts, that have been associated with pleasure, retain the power of pleasing; as the needle touched by the loadstone acquires polarity, and retains it long after the loadstone is withdrawn."

— Edgeworth, Maria

Date: 1799

"His emotion seemed to communicate itself, with an electrical rapidity, to my heart."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1799

"Soul-chearing rays" may be eclipsed

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: w. 1796, 1799

"My soul was held up by the power of God, as the needle by the loadstone, and I did by faith, with joy draw water out of these wells of salvation."

— Osborn, Sarah (1714-1796)

Date: 1800

Thoughts may be kept in "perpetual motion"

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"A sort of electrical sympathy pervaded my companion, and terror and anguish were strongly manifested in the glances which she sometimes stole at me."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1807

"The formalism of such a 'Philosophy of Nature' teaches, say, that the Understanding is Electricity, or the Animal is Nitrogen, or that they are the equivalent of the South or North Pole, etc., or represent it."

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)