Date: 1735
"He seemed therefore confident, that instead of Reason, we were only possessed of some Quality fitted to increase our natural Vices; as the Reflection from a troubled Stream returns the Image of an ill-shapen Body, not only larger, but more distorted."
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1737
"My faults will not be hid from you, and perhaps it is no dispraise to me that they will not: the cleanness and purity of one's mind is never better proved, than in discovering its own faults at first view; as when a stream shows the dirt at its bottom, it shows also the transparency of the water."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1737, 1743
"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1737, 1743
"It is with narrow-soul'd People as with narrow-neck'd Bottles: The less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1737
"You see 'tis with weak heads as with weak stomachs, they immediately throw out what they received last; and what they read floats upon the surface of their mind, like oil upon water, without incorporating."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1740
"The quiet of Our mind destroys, / Or with a full spring-tide of joys, / Or a dead-ebb of grief. "
preview | full record— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)
Date: 1746, 1749
"For Peace and War succeed by Turns in Love, / And while tempestuous these Emotions roll, / And float with blind Disorder in the Soul."
preview | full record— Francis, Philip (1708-1773)
Date: 1748
"My bosom had been hitherto a stranger to such a flood of joy as now rushed upon it: My faculties were overborn by the tide"
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)
Date: 1751
One may "pour forth the overflowings of his soul, and tell her that he neither could nor would survive her displeasure"
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)
Date: 1753
"The nymph, whose passions nature had filled to the brim, could not hear such a rhapsody unmoved"
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)