Date: 1760-7
"Indeed there is one thing to be considered, that in Nova Zembla, North Lapland, and in all those cold and dreary tracts of the globe, which lie more directly under the artick and antartick circles,--where the whole province of a man's concernments lies for near nine months together, withi...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1771, 1816
"Thus man [like a cataract], the harpy of his own content, / With blust'ring passions, phrensically bent, / Wild in the rapid vortex whirls the soul, / Till reason bursts, impatient of controul."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
Date: 1771, 1816
"But now the wavy conflict tends to peace, / And jarring elements their tumults cease, / Placid below, the stream obsequious flows, / And silent wonders how fell Discord grows./ So the calm mind reviews her tortur'd state, / Resuming reason for the cool debate."
preview | full record— Maude, Thomas (1718-1798)
Date: 1776
"Not that I wou'd encourage the modern philosophy, which reduces all virtue to self-interest; for if I may hazard an unborrowed simile, the liberal mind may be compared to the Nile, which enriches the soil, from its own abundance, without requiring any return."
preview | full record— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)
Date: 1783
"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1784
"The minds of these, our fellow-creatures, that are now drowned in ignorance, being thus opened and improved, the pale of reason would be enlarged; Christianity would receive new strength; liberty new subjects."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1785
"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)
Date: w. c. 1800, 1805
"These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent."
preview | full record— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)
Date: November 10, 1813
"I by no means rank poetry or poets high in the scale of intellect. This may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruptions prevents an earthquake."
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)