Date: 1774
"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1778
" In thee, by art, the demon stands confest, / But nature on thy soul has stamped the god."
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)
Date: 1787
"The shield, an emblem of thy soul, displays / Truth, equity and wisdom, hand in hand."
preview | full record— Glover, Richard (1712-1785)
Date: 1789
"A different store his richer freight imparts-- / The gem of virtue, and the gold of hearts; / The social sense, the feelings of mankind, / And the large treasure of a godlike mind!"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: 1803
"Why, curst remembrance, wilt thou haunt my mind?"
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)
Date: 1803
A partner of one's "future state" should not have "strong vice" "stamped upon her mind"
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)
Date: 1803
"He stammers,--instantaneously is drawn / A bordered piece of inspiration-lawn, / Which being thrice unto his nose applied, / Into his pineal gland the vapours glide; / And now again we hear the doctor roar / On subjects he dissected thrice before."
preview | full record— Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770)