Date: 1724
"Those Reflections began to prey upon my Comforts, and lessen the Sweets of my other Enjoyments: They might be said to have gnaw'd a Hole in my Heart before; but now they made a Hole quite thro' it; now they eat into all my pleasant things; made bitter every Sweet, and mix'd my Sighs with every S...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Date: 1741 [1740]; continued in 1741
"Don't your Heart ake for me? --I am sure mine flutter'd about like a Bird in a Cage new caught."
preview | full record— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Date: 1751
"Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and again to no purpose."
preview | full record— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Date: 1854
"He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been--in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away--by the fervor of this reproach."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1992
"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 1992
"It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 1992
"Heroin landed purring at the base of his skull, and wrapped itself darkly around his nervous system, like a black cat curling up on its favourite cushion."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)