Date: 1789
"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure."
preview | full record— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)
Date: 1789
"In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire [pain and pleasure]: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while"
preview | full record— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)
Date: w. January 24, 1789
"Reason drops headlong from his sacred throne."
preview | full record— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Date: w. January 24, 1789
"Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone; / Each thought intoxicated homage yields, / And riots wanton in forbidden fields."
preview | full record— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Date: 1789, 1800
"On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labors, / That, like th'old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours."
preview | full record— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Date: 1789, 1800
"Human Nature's his show-box--your friend, would you know him? / Pull the string, Ruling Passion--the picture will show him."
preview | full record— Burns, Robert (1759-1796)
Date: 1789, 1791, 1799
"Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, / Inexorable Conscience holds his court"
preview | full record— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Date: February 1791
"It has apparently burst forth like a creation from a chaos, but it is no more than the consequence of a mental revolution priorily existing in France."
preview | full record— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
Date: 1793
"Law may be supposed to have been constructed in the tranquil serenity of the soul, a suitable monitor to check the inflamed mind with which the recent memory of ills might induce us to proceed to the exercise of coercion"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"The present ruling passion of the human mind is the love of distinction. "
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)