Date: 1777
"It is not astonishing that the frail body, when the spirit is carried away by the magnificence of its own ideas ... that the frail body, which is the natural victim of pain, disease, and death, should not always be able to follow the mind in its aspiring flights, but should be as imperfect as if...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777, 1810
"Then in his bosom bright ideas teem; / Each tender, each exalted theme."
preview | full record— Stockdale, Percival (1736-1811)
Date: 1778, 1779
"A confused idea now for the first time entered my head, something I had heard of the rules of assemblies; but I was never at one before,--I have only danced at school,--and so giddy and heedless I was, that I had not once considered the impropriety of refusing one partner, and afterwards accepti...
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"I was thunderstruck at the recollection: but, while these thoughts were rushing into my head, Lord Orville, with some warmth, said, 'This lady, Sir, is incapable of meriting such an accusation!'"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"Almost instantly, the whole truth of the transaction seemed to rush upon her mind, and her wrath was inconceivably violent."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1778, 1779
"How rapid was then my Evelina's progress through those regions of fancy and passion whither her new guide conducted her!"
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: December 10, 1778; 1779
"Where all is novelty, the attention, the exercise of the mind is too violent."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1779
"If one spark of virtue / Yet hovers in his mind--Oh, grant me, Heaven! / To kindle it afresh, and be the flame immortal!"
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)