Date: 1774
"Some have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot, by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lu...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1774
"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1776
"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...
preview | full record— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)
Date: 1776
"Being chosen by Vulcan, Neptune and Minerva, to give his judgment concerning their works, he blamed them all; Neptune for not making his bull with horns before his eyes; Minerva for building a house that could not be removed in case of bad neighbours; and Vulcan for making a man without a window...
preview | full record— Noorthouck, John (1746?-1816)
Date: 1777
"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: September 2, 1770 to September 12, 1773; October, 1770 [1777]
"So simple a people I scarce ever saw. They did 'open the window in their breast.' And it was easy to discern, that God was there, filling them with joy and peace in believing."
preview | full record— Wesley, John (1703-1791)
Date: 1778
God, "Who view'st each thought yet lab'ring in my mind, / Say, in what secret cell,
/ Far from the glance of feeble human kind, / Doth pure religion dwell?"
preview | full record— Ellis, George (1753-1815)
Date: w. c. 1779
"[T]hen prudence took her Seat / Within the Soul, and reign'd in Virtue's room."
preview | full record— Crabbe, George (1754-1832)
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)
Date: 1780
"Through the night's still air / The sound of human voices, and the clank / Of iron hoofs, reveal'd a scene at once, / That almost shook his soul from her frail tenement."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)