Date: 1790
"Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void which reigns in minds which have nothing on earth to hope or fear."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: December 1790
"The vulgar have not the power of emptying their mind of the only ideas they imbibed whilst their hands were employed; they cannot quickly turn from one kind of life to another."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1791
"As in filling a vessel drop by dy drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. "
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: January 19, 1791
"But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1791, 1794
"I mean not to extenuate the faults of those unhappy women who fall victims to guilt and folly; but surely, when we reflect how many errors we are ourselves subject to, how many secret faults lie hid in the recesses of our hearts, which we should blush to have brought into open day (and yet those...
preview | full record— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)
Date: December 10, 1790; 1791
"The sublime in Painting, as in Poetry, so overpowers, and takes such a possession of the whole mind, that no room is left for attention to minute criticism."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1791
"Johnson was much attached to London: he observed, that a man stored his mind better there, than any where else; and that in remote situations a man's body might be feasted, but his mind was starved, and his faculties apt to degenerate, from want of exercise and competition."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1791
"This is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere 5, that 'a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it;' for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on hi...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1791
"Every page of the Rambler shews a mind teeming with classical allusion and poetical imagery."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1792
"We mean not to bring it into competition with any of the more useful ends of travelling: but as many travel without any end at all, amusing themselves without being able to give a reason why they are amused, we offer an end, which may possibly engage some vacant minds; and may indeed afford a ra...
preview | full record— Gilpin, William (1724-1804)