Date: 1777
"But the heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1782
"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"Were I poetically turned--what a glorious field for fancy flights--such as the blue-eyed Goddess with her flying carr--her doves and sparrows, &c. &c.--Alas! my imagination is as barren as the desert sands of Arabia."
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1783
"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1785
"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1785
"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)