Date: 1751
"His mind does not receive the impression of the moral world, in the same manner, as wax receives the impression of a seal. It does not reflect the image of it, in the same manner, as a mirror reflects its images: it has a peculiar cast and turn given to its conceptions, admirably ordered to exal...
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"Oh! that I could express, that I could describe, these great conceptions, with the same warmth, with the same energy, that they are impressed on my soul!" [Literal translation: "Oh could you only express, could you the breathe forth upon this paper all that lives so warm and full, that it might ...
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: 1788
There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790
"Her mind resembled an empty mirror, which has no character, no images of its own, borrows every impression from some passing object, and, if left to itself, would for ever remain vacant."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1796
"No drug, nor juice of all the acid tribe, / Can move the Tints, which Glassy Pores imbibe; / So no mean prejudice, no bribes, nor art, / Efface th' Impressions of an Upright Heart."
preview | full record— Bishop, Samuel (1731-1795)
Date: 1797
"Over the gloom of Schedoni, no scenery had, at any moment, power; the shape and paint of external imagery gave neither impression or colour to his fancy."
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)