Date: 1681

"Some livelier spark of heaven, and more refined / From earthly dross, fills the great poet's mind."

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: 1717

"Some livelier Spark of Heav'n, and more refin'd / From earthly Dross, fills the great Poet's Mind."

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: 1721

"This, of all Vice, does most debase the Mind, / Gold is itself th'Allay to Human-kind."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: 1723, 1740

"Those slighted Favours which cold Nymphs dispense, / Mere common Counters of the Sense, / Defective both in Mettle and in Measure, / A Lover's Fancy coins into a Treasure."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: 1723, 1740

"And if their Heads but any Substance hold, / Love ripens all that Dross into the purest Gold."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: Tuesday, August 28, 1750

"Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction: but gold may be so concealed in baser matter that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebe...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1842

"For a shrewd intellect, the best employ / Is to detect a soul of base alloy;"

— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846)

Date: 1842

None "can I find / No sterling unadulterated mind; / None that abides the crucible like mine"

— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846)