Date: c. 43 AD
"Those things that men's untutored hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies--jewels, gold, silver, and polished tables, huge and round--all these are earthly dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature, can have no love, since it is itself light and uncumbered, wa...
preview | full record— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
Date: 1689
And yet there is, there is one prize / Lock'd in an adamantine Breast; / Storm that then, Love, if thou be'st wise, / A Conquest above all the rest, / Her Heart, who binds all Hearts in chains, / Castanna's Heart untouch'd remains."
preview | full record— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)
Date: 1691
"Grace doth our Souls to God unite, / Like glorious Golden Chains."
preview | full record— Keach, Benjamin (1640-1704)
Date: 1724
"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1730
"Thou golden chain 'twixt God and men, / Bless'd Reason! guide my life and pen."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1736
"To live without Restraint, is to live indeed, cry'd she, and I no longer wonder, that the free Mind finds it so difficult to yield to those Fetters, Priests and Philosophers would bind it in, and which were never forged by, nor are consistent with Reason."
preview | full record— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)
Date: 1737
"Brave Souls when loos'd from this ignoble Chain / Of Clay, and sent to their own Heav'n again, / From Earth's gross Orb on Virtue's Pinions rise / In Æther wanton, and enjoy the Skies."
preview | full record— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)
Date: January 1739
"I know that the fear of the civil magistrate is as strong a restraint as any of iron, and that I am in as perfect safety as if he were chain'd or imprison'd."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1739
"To usher forth the Virtues of the Mind! / From Nature's Chain, from Earthly Dross set free, / One only Appetite remained in Thee."
preview | full record— Wesley, John and Charles
Date: 1760
"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)