Date: 1783

"Does the human soul go up to the pia mater, as a housewife does to her garret, only at certain times? Or, if she makes it her place of abode, are there any corners of it which she is unacquainted with, or neglects to look into?'

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1784

"Oh! spare me, Julia--look on me as I am, an alter'd man--peace has been a stranger to my bosom, and remorse and sorrow my constant companions, since we parted"

— Andrews, Miles Peter (1742-1814)

Date: October, 1784

"Justice should be a man's governor [...] Reason his secretary, / Judgment his steward."

— Anonymous

Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

A meagre intellect is "unfit / To be tenant of man's noble form"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Knowledge and wisdom dwell in the head: knowledge in "heads replete with thoughts of other men" and wisdom "in minds attentive of their own"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"

— Paley, William (1743-1805)

Date: 1785

Silence is the "Refuge of tender hearts must fear mixing "With the mad multitude, where passions fell, / And strangers to their bosom, enter wild, / Like Sin and Death in Paradise, to jar / On the soft music of according souls!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: May 18, 1782, 1785

"Oh, that every heart was like mine, a stranger to dissimulation!"

— Pilon, Frederick (1750-1788)