Date: 1783

"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"A maxim, or moral saying, properly enough receives this form; both because it is supposed to be the fruit of meditation, and because it is designed to be engraven on the memory, which recalls it more easily by the help of such contrasted expressions."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"Thus have we proved it never happens, / That ornament and outward trappings, / Can make on the heart the least impression, / Much less secure a fix'd possession."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1783

"Learn hence, that husbands will be blind / To every beauty but the mind; / Great Venus there should hold her court; / should the Loves and Graces sport / There rapture beam'd in every feature, / Bound by that Cestus, called Good Nature."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1783

The senses may "sing and dance round Reason's fine-wrought throne"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1783

"O sheathe their hearts with triple steel, that they / May emulate their fathers' virtues"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1783

"He carries windows / In that enlarged breast of his, that all / May see what's done within"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1783

"The enemy fight in chains, invisible chains, but heavy; / Their minds are fetter'd; then how can they be free, / While, like the mounting flame, / We spring to battle o'er the floods of death?"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1783

"While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! "

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

In reverie "we are conscious of something like mental relaxation; while one idea brings in another, which gives way to a third, and that in its turn is succeeded by others; the mind seeming all along to be passive, and to exert as little authority over its thoughts, as the eye does over the perso...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)