Date: 1778, 1779

"Let me, therefore, prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the s...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Young, animated, entirely off your guard, and thoughtless of consequences, imagination took the reins, and reason, slow-paced, though sure-footed, was unequal to a race with so eccentric and flighty a companion."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"I was myself almost equally disturbed, by the croud of confused ideas that occured to me."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1804

"The stranger, Reason, cross'd her way."

— Langhorne, John (1735-1779)

Date: 1773, 1778

"The Passions there embody'd throng, / On mental Pinions, swift, and strong, / In Robes array'd of various Fire"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1779

Jesus may "inhabitest the humble mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: August, September, and October, 1779

"Thus it happened with me on the present occasion; and I found my ideas suddenly drawn from the sermon in my hand and (in their vagabond way) hurrying over the birth, parentage, education, and situation of the reverend penman."

— Anonymous

Date: 1779

"Such pensiveness oft follows, when the mind, / Surcharg'd with joy, hath yielded all her pow'rs / To the insidious guest."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1780

"May every ear the call obey, / Be every heart a humble guest!"

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"There meet together, adultery, avarice, perjury, and every other vice; the soul is overwhelmed beneath them, and justice, modesty, and virtue are no more: bereft of these, the mind becomes dry and barren, or only teems with savage and brutal extravagance."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)