Date: January 19, 1791
"Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in pro...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: January 19, 1791
"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1791
"His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at once have snapt asunder."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1792
"Love sits triumphant on the heart--his throne! / And breaks those fetters bigots would impose, / To aggravate the sense of human woes!"
preview | full record— Morton, Thomas (1764-1838)
Date: 1792
"Curs'd lethargy of the soul! ... that chain'd my better judgement, cramp'd all my strength of mind--ruin'd all my prospects."
preview | full record— Tytler, Alexander Fraser (1747-1813); Schiller (1759-1805)
Date: 1792
"I should be a pitiful bungler indeed, if I knew not yet how to tear a son from the heart of his father, were they link'd together with chains of iron."
preview | full record— Tytler, Alexander Fraser (1747-1813); Schiller (1759-1805)
Date: 1792
"Now that stern habit throws without controul / Her chain of adamant around thy soul / May not th' unhappy Abelard disclose / (To her who pities most) his train of woes?"
preview | full record— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)
Date: w. 1791-2
"But, sent from God, his presence leaves, / To gather home his ripen'd sheaves, / To call encumber'd souls away / From fleshly bonds to boundless day, / (As when the winged hours excite, / And summon forth the morning-light) / And each to convoy to her place / Before the Eternal Father's face."
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1792
"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."
preview | full record— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)
Date: 1792
"My passions must be, ought to be, and therefore shall be, under my control; and, being conscious of the purity of my own intentions, I have never thought that the emanations of mind ought to be shackled by the dread of their being misinterpreted."
preview | full record— Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809)