Date: 1788
"But in general, I know of no method of getting money, not even that of robbing for it upon the highway, which has so direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility."
preview | full record— Newton, John (1725-1807)
Date: 1788
""Ah! will you not there hear me? Will you still inhumanly smile; will you still look so gentle, while your heart is harder than the rocks we shall see--colder than the snow that crowns them!--an heart on which even the pen of fire which Rousseau held would make no impression!"
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"But tho' she was immoveably determined against receiving him again as a lover, she had not been able to steel her heart against his melancholy appearance; his palid countenance, his ematiated form, extremely affected her."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"As to you, my sweet marble-hearted Emmeline, I heartily pray that all your coldness both towards me and poor Delamere may be revenged by your feeling, on behalf of him, all the pain you have inflicted."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1788
"Not so the slave; oppress'd with secret care, / He sinks the hapless victim of despair; / Or, doom'd to torments that might even move / The steely heart, and melt it into love; / Till worn with anguish, with'ring in his bloom, / He falls an early tenant of the tomb!"
preview | full record— Falconar, Maria (b. 1771-) and Harriet (b. 1774-)
Date: February 3, 1788
"The spirit of the Gospel 'proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound:' but these men rivet the chains of slavery; 'the iron enters into the Negro's soul,' while while his mind is left in all the darkness of ignorance, without one ray of those comforts ...
preview | full record— Agutter, William (1758-835)
Date: 1788
"For Virtue, with divine controul, / Collects the various powers of soul; / And lends, from her unsullied source, / The gems of thought their purest force."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"True courage in the unconquer'd soul / Yields to Compassion's mild controul; / As, the resisting frame of steel / The magnet's secret force can feel."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"Ah! think not, WHITE, the Muse from fancy brings / Those woes, for Hist'ry sanctions what she sings, / Her bloody Annals still does Truth unfold, / Stain'd with the victims of soul-spotting gold."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)