Date: 1742
"Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven, / By tyrant Life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd? / By Death enlarged, ennobled, deified? / Death but entombs the body; Life, the soul."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1743
"Is this the cause Death flies all human thought? / Or is it Judgment by the Will struck blind, / (That domineering mistress of the soul,) / Like him so strong, by Delilah the fair?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Then the inexpressive strain / Diffuses its inchantment: fancy dreams / Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, / And vales of bliss: the intellectual power / Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, / And smiles: the passions, gently sooth'd away, / Sink to divine repose, and love and joy /...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1745
"As in the humours of the body, so in the vices of the mind, there is one predominant which has an ascendant over us, and leads and governs us."
preview | full record— Mason, John (1706-1763)
Date: December 29, 1759
"If the senses were feasted with perpetual pleasure, they would always keep the mind in subjection."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1762-3
"[T]he five senses in alliance [may] / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroke, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old"
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)
Date: 1773
"O Wisdom! if thy soft controul / Can soothe the sickness of the soul, / Can bid the warring passions cease, / And breathe the calm of tender peace;-- / Wisdom! I bless thy gentle sway, / And ever, ever will obey."
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773
"But if thou com'st with frown austere / To nurse the brood of care and fear; / To bid our sweetest passions die, / And leave us in their room a sigh; / Or if thine aspect stern have power / To wither each poor transient flower, / That cheers the pilgrimage of woe, / And dry the springs whence ho...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
Date: 1773
"The resentment which, instead of being expressed, is nursed in secret, and continually aggravated by the imagination, will, in time, become the ruling passion; and then, how horrible must be his case, whose kind and pleasurable affections are all swallowed up by the tormenting as well as detesta...
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1783
"The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imaginati...
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)