Date: 1786
"You confound their abilities by the severity of their servitude: for as a spark of fire, if crushed by too great a weight of incumbent fuel, cannot be blown into a flame, but suddenly expires, so the human mind, if depressed by rigorous servitude, cannot be excited to a display of those facultie...
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: 1786
"If at this recital his indignation should arise, let him consider it as the genuine production of nature; that she recoiled at the horrid thought, and that she applied instantly a torch to his breast to kindle his resentment."
preview | full record— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)
Date: December 11, 1786; 1787
"Because these Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1788
" My panting soul is all on fire"
preview | full record— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)
Date: 1788, 1803
"Oh! may good angels, kindling in thy breast / The lamp of reason, guard thee from their snares!"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: 1788
"Thou Christian emperor in whose generous breast / The light of pure devotion shone impress'd, / That sacred light descending from above, / An emanation of coelestial love; / With speed of light'ning spread the lambent ray, / Till realms of darkness kindled into day; / From God himself the spark ...
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1789, 1797
"Each motive base it [the soul] nobly spurns, / And bright with purest passion burns."
preview | full record— Berkeley, George Monck (1763-1793)
Date: 1790
"'Tis thus the arch deceiver, busy still / To ruin man, besets the female heart, / Insinuates evil counsel, and inflames / The hungry passions, that like arid flax / Catch at a spark, and mount into a blaze."
preview | full record— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)
Date: 1790
"Our minds, when young, are like tinder--they will catch any spark, whether emitted by Virtue or by Vice; and it is to be lamented, that the latter emits them more than the former."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)
Date: 1791
"This is that incense of the heart / Whose fragrance smells to heaven."
preview | full record— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)