Date: 1759
"Their [pedants'] constant overstraining of the Mind / Distorts the Brain, as Horses break their Wind / Or rude Confusions of the Things they read / Get up, like noxious Vapours, in the Head, / Until they have their constant Wanes and Fulls, / And Changes in the Insides of their Skulls."
preview | full record— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)
Date: 1775
"What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul, / Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, / By Reason's light on Resolution's wings, / Spite of her frail / companion, dauntless goes / O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows? "
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
"For Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of the sensible world."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
"What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship - what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave - and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where th...
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)