Date: 1778
The heart like a bird to its nestling will fly, / And when by the weight of a parent its bending, / Yet wishes while constant to break and to die. / Like a bird in a snare, of its freedom bereft, / Still hoping and wishing releasement again, / 'Till clos'd in the cage the flutterer is left / To p...
preview | full record— Robertson, James (fl.1768-1788)
Date: 1782
"Pleasure, the rambling Bird! the painted Jay! / May snatch the richest seeds of Verse away; / Or Indolence, the worm that winds with art / Thro' the close texture of the cleanest heart, / May, if they haply have begun to shoot, / With partial mischief wound the sick'ning root; / Or Avarice, the ...
preview | full record— Hayley, William (1745-1820)
Date: 1785
"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: w. 1789, 1804
"While Vanity unveils her whiffling flags, / Her glittering trinkets, and her tawdry rags-- / Spreads spangled nets, and fills her philter'd bowl, / To fix each Sense, and fascinate the Soul-- / Her birdlime twigs contrived with such sly Art, / That while they tangle thoughts, they trap the heart...
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: January 19, 1791
"But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1819
"He is styed in his prejudices -- he wallows in the mire of his senses -- he cannot get beyond the trough of his sordid appetites, whether it is of gold or wood."
preview | full record— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)
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: March 17, 1950 [2005]
"One of those involuntary revealing thoughts one surprises, running like a rat through the muck-heap of my mind: Maybe I'll be able to afford that ikon if he goes."
preview | full record— Friend, Donald (1915-1989)
Date: 1965
"The ripe brain rotting like a yellow nut / Hatching / Its babel of sea-lice, sandfly, and maggot."
preview | full record— Walcott, Derek (b. 1930)
Date: 1978, 1979
"The mind is like the untrained elephant. When it is bound with the cord of mindfulness to the firm post of the previously discussed meditative object, [even] if it is unwilling to remain there, it is gradually brought under control, goaded by the hook of awareness."
preview | full record— Wayman, Alex