Date: 1607
"To quench thy learned thirst I meant to draine / The Hippocrenian Fountaine of my braine."
preview | full record— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)
Date: 1610
Souls may "by our first touch, take in / The poisonous tincture of original sin"
preview | full record— Donne, John (1572-1631)
Date: 1632
"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...
preview | full record— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)
Date: 1654
"First, all honest hearts are put into a just; but unprofitable horror, to think that such a flagitious wickedness could be committed; Then the Mother, who had rinced her soule with a fountain of teares, for so hatefull a miscarriage, and reconciled her self to that God, who was the only witness ...
preview | full record— Hall, Joseph (1574-1656)
Date: 1660, 1676
"In these men the principles are holy, the instruction perfect, the law remaining, the perswasions uncancelled; but against all this torrent there is a whirlwind of passions, and filthy resolutions, and wilfulness, which corrupt the heart, while as yet the head is uncorrupted in the direct rules ...
preview | full record— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)
Date: 1681
"The mind, that ocean where each kind / Does straight its own resemblance find, / Yet it creates, transcending these, / Far other worlds, and other seas"
preview | full record— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)
Date: 1682
"Betwixt violent Passion, and a Fluctuation, or Wambling of the Mind, there is such a Difference, as betwixt the Agitation of a Storm, and the Nauseous Sickness of a Calm."
preview | full record— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)
Date: 1687
"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...
preview | full record— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)
Date: 1691
"I cannot conceive the true Cause hereof [that Men of Learning are uncouth in their discourse], unless it be, that as Plants are Choakt by over-much Moisture, and Lamps are Stifl'd with too much Oil; so are the Actions of the Mind overwhelm'd by over-abundance of Matter and Study."
preview | full record— Blount, Thomas Pope, Sir (1649-1697)
Date: 1691
"Why just then, all of a sudden, before I cou'd say what's this, or knew where I was, my Noddle now swimming with a million of Fancies, (as I alwayes had a very working Brain,) and I not minding my way, in tumbled I into the River, hugging the waves so tenderly, you can't imagine."
preview | full record— Dunton, John (1659–1732)