Date: April 26, 1695; 1708
"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1733-4
"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Passion's fierce illapse / Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies / Of daily impulse keeps the elastic powers / Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew / By that collision all the fine machine: / Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees / Incumbering, choak at last what heaven design'd ...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1759
"My soul with pleasure takes her flight, that thus / Faithful in death, I leave these cold remains / Near thy dear honour'd clay."
preview | full record— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)
Date: 1759
"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1760
"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: January 1, 1779
"There [to Heaven's Regions] when the soul, in search of purer day, / Loos'd from mortality's impris'ning clay / Shall swifter than the forked lightning dart."
preview | full record— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)