Date: May 10, 1704
"Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise."
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: Saturday, March 29, 1712
"The Sixth Book, like a troubled Ocean, represents Greatness in Confusion; the seventh Affects the Imagination like the Ocean in a Calm, and fills the Mind of the Reader, without producing in it any thing like Tumult or Agitation."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 1712
"Our Admiration, which is a very pleasing Motion of the Mind, immediately rises at the Consideration of any Object that takes up a great deal of Room in the Fancy, and by Consequence, will improve into the highest Pitch of Astonishment and Devotion when we contemplate his Nature, that is neither ...
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1713
"But oh! my Friends, your Safety fills my Heart / With anxious Thoughts: A thousand secret Terrors, / Rise in my Soul."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1730
"And when with these the serious thought is foil'd, / We, shifting for relief, would play the shapes / Of frolic fancy; and incessant form / Unnumber'd pictures, fleeting o'er the brain / Yet rapid still renew'd, and pour'd immense / Into the mind, unbounded without space."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)
Date: 1737
"As Years advance, th'abated Soul in most / Sinks to low Ebb, in second Childhood lost; / And feeble Age, dishonouring our Kind, / Robs all the Treasures of the wasted Mind"
preview | full record— Hughes, Jabez (1685-1731)
Date: 1742, 1777
"The heart, mean while, is empty of all enjoyment: And the mind, unsupported by its proper objects, sinks into the deepest sorrow and dejection."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1743
"This wings its Way to its Almighty Source, / The Witness of its Actions, now its Judge: / That drops into the dark and noisome Grave, / Like a disabled Pitcher of no Use."
preview | full record— Blair, Robert (1699-1746)