Date: 1789
"For of calamity so long the prey, / Imagination now has lost her powers, / Nor will her fairy loom again essay / To dress affliction in a robe of flowers."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1789
"Hope and fear are the two grand springs by which that curious machine, the human mind, is actuated; and to deprive Virtue of that support which she receives from their influence and operation, and to substitute in their room a sense of honour, or a love of moral beauty and order, is to betray th...
preview | full record— Belsham, William (1752-1827)
Date: 1790
"Their view calls off his attention from his own view; and his breast is, in some measure, becalmed the moment they come into his presence. This effect is produced instantaneously and, as it were, mechanically; but, with a weak man, it is not of long continuance."
preview | full record— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)
Date: 1792
"For it is seldom done entirely, to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the gradual improvement."
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1793
"It was from a view of this truth that the poets derived their fictions respecting the early history of mankind; well aware that, when luxury was introduced and the springs of mind unbent, it would be a vain expectation that should hope to recal men from passion to reason, and from effeminacy to ...
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1793
"Human nature, like a vast machine, is not to be understood by looking on its superficies, but by dwelling on its minute springs and little wheels."
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: 1795
"Still to be serious, Pitt, before we part: / Let Mercy melt the mill-stone of thy heart."
preview | full record— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)
Date: 1797
"But the subtlety of self-love still eluded his enquiries, and he did not detect that pride was even at this instant of self-examination, and of critical import, the master-spring of his mind."
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)
Date: 1798
"When once this generous desire of affection and esteem is raised in the mind, their exertions seem to be universal, and spontaneous: children are then no longer like machines, which require to be wound up regularly to perform certain revolutions; they are animated with a living principle, which ...
preview | full record— Edgeworth, Maria
Date: 1799
"I was driven, by a sort of mechanical impulse, in his foot-steps."
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)