Date: 1651, 1668
"All fancies are motions within us, relics of those made in the sense: and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter...
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: w. 1682, 1702
Chastity may "tincture Humane Hearts with holy Awe, / And deeply there engrave the Royal Law"
preview | full record— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)
Date: w. c. 1709, 1711
"As on the land while here the Ocean gains, / In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; / Thus in the soul while memory prevails, / The solid pow'r of understanding fails; / Where beams of warm imagination play, / The memory's soft figures melt away."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1726, 1753
"Restless, on paper, we our vows repeat, / And pour our souls out, on the missive sheet"
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1731
"Cruelly kind, press inward, on my Heart; / But fright not Reason, cling not to my Thought, / Blot, blot Remembrance out, strike Home, at Life, / Pour, all at once, Oblivion on my Soul, / And quench me, into Quiet."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1741
"So for Instance, in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an Hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them: All the Traces, Forms or Images which are drawn there, are immediately effaced or closed...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1743
"We bleed, we tremble; we forget, we smile: / The mind turns fool before the cheek is dry. / Our quick-returning folly cancels all; / As the tide rushing rases what is writ / In yielding sands, and smooths the letter'd shore."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1778, 1779
"'Oh, Sir,' exclaimed I, 'that you could but read my heart!--that you could but see the filial tenderness and concern with which it overflows! you would not then talk thus,--you would not then banish me your presence, and exclude me from your affection!'"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1785
"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)