Date: 1852

"Ah! well for us, if even we, / Even for a moment, can get free / Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd; / For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!"

— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)

Date: 1852

"Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, / From the soul's subterranean depth upborne / As from an infinitely distant land, / Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey / A melancholy into all our day."

— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)

Date: 1852

"A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, / And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again."

— Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888)

Date: Date Unknown

It is difficult for a "powerful mind" to be its own master: "a lake wants mountains to compass and hold it in."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: November and December 1853, 1856

"To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1854

"Let it [caelestïal Sweetness] not stop when entred at the Ear / But sink, and take deep rooting in my heart."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1854

A priest can "secretly impress / On the soft wax of Woman's yielded mind / Each vile impression, which a Jesuit loves"

— Montgomery, Robert (1807-1855)

Date: 1854

"The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within--or sometimes only maim him and distort him!"

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)