Date: 1888

"I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul."

— Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903)

Date: 1888

"It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul."

— Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903)

Date: 1891

"So those high orthodoxies came to be / Quick seeds in me of heterodox opinion, / And, ere I wist, my thoughts were all at sea, / And drifted, holden by no wise dominion."

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1891

"In him there was a faith serene and strong, / In me an unrest, like the rush of water"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1891

"Yet in his stern creed lay a tender heart, / The husk o'erlaid a wealth of human kindness / And love, that fain their wisdom would impart / To purge the young soul of its earthly blindness"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1891

"And it did store the mind with furniture -- / In forms antique, forbidding peaceful slumber, / But morticed well, and fashioned to endure, / Hard to get into, or out of heads they cumber"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1893

"Thy mind is like a crystal brook / Wherein clean creatures live at ease / In sun-bright waves or shady nook."

— Gilder, Richard Watson (1844-1809)

Date: 1898

"Silently we went round and round, / And through each hollow mind / The Memory of dreadful things / Rushed like a dreadful wind, / And Horror stalked before each man, / And Terror crept behind."

— Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854-1900)

Date: 1900

"Then from this hour deep on my heart engraved / Be all my duty needful."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1900

"Who stamped us with the minting die / Of this unconquerable need / To know the unknown Deity / And name the nameless in a creed?"

— Money-Coutts, Francis Burdett Thomas, 5th Lord Latimer (1852-1923)