Date: 1776-1789
"The ancient families of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Cæsars; and, whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible that any idea of hereditary succession should have ...
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1778
"A thirst for knowledge, which can never be gratified, would not have been implanted; a mind which was to be chained to the earth, would never have been bent on the skies"
preview | full record— Caulfield (fl. 1778)
Date: 1779, 1781
"A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1781
"In his 'Night Thoughts' he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"Pope foresaw the future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1782
"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"Your infants growing--with the roseate bloom of health--minds cultured by their father--expanding daily in every improvement--blest little souls!--and happy--happy parents!"
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1783
" In this way, too, we learn to think for ourselves, and acquire in time a stock of knowledge that is properly of our own growth: which is proof, that our minds are really cultivated, and serves as an encouragement to persist in making further acquisitions."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1784
"In general the faculties of the mind must be expanded to a certain degree, before religion will take root, or flourish among a people; and a certain proportion of civil liberty is necessary, on which to found that expansion of the mind, which moral or religious liberty requires."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1784, 1804
"When this is the case the hedge (to our feelings) is broken down, and we lie exposed to every temptation; as says the Psalmist--'Why hast thou broken down her hedges, so that all they that pass by the way do pluck her?' Psal. lxxx. 12"
preview | full record— Huntington, William (1745-1813)