Date: 1791

"Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"In his soul was the serpent coil'd round in his heart, hid from the light, as in a cleft rock"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: 1791

"If his imagination be not sickly and feeble, it 'wings its distant way' far beyond himself, and views the world in unceasing activity of every sort."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1791

"I suppose, Sir, he has thought superficially, and seized the first notions which occurred to his mind. … Why then, Sir, still he is like a dog"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1791

"His mind resembled the vast ampitheatre, the Colisaeum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgment, which like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives then b...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1792

"Ah me! the passion that my soul misled / Was check'd, not conquer'd; buried, but not dead: / Now bursting from the grave, in evil hour, / It hastens to its prey with fiercer pow'r, / And, vulture-like, with appetite increas'd / It riots on the undiminish'd feast."

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

Date: 1792

"Nay, from the palaces the Virtues fly, / While boldly entering from their beastly stye, / The vulgar passions rush to pig with kings!

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1793

"The offspring of mind is daily sacrificed by hecatombs to the genius of monarchy."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

The author can't understand an afterlife "where the mind, doomed to everlasting inactivity, shall be wholly a prey to the upbraidings of remorse and the sarcasms of devils, is so foreign to the system of things with which I am acquainted"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)