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: 1783
"The want of air and exercise, with interrupted digestion, unhinges the bodily frame: and the mind, long and violently exerted in one direction, like a bow long bent, loses its elasticity, and, unable to recover itself, remains stupidly fixed in the same distorted posture"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
Some philosophers "think, that the brains of old men, grown callous by length of time, are, like hard wax, equally tenacious of old impressions, and unsusceptible of new."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1784
"I love to weep, love the soft feast of grief, / Court mournful thoughts, nor ever wish relief;-- / Sadness I woo, yet still the phantom flies, / And joy seduces, whilst I ask for sighs."
preview | full record— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)
Date: 1784
"Had I the dread necessity explained, / That with resistless force my freedom chained; / Tore the sweet bands, by virtuous passion tied, / And stampt our constancy with parricide."
preview | full record— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)
Date: October, 1784
"The understanding is like the sun, which gives light and life to the whole intellectual world; but the memory, regarding those things only that are past, is like the moon, which is new and full and has her wane by turns."
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1784
"In general the faculties of the mind must be expanded to a certain degree, before religion will take root, or flourish among a people; and a certain proportion of civil liberty is necessary, on which to found that expansion of the mind, which moral or religious liberty requires."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1784
"Ah! season of delight!--could aught be found / To soothe awhile the tortur'd bosom's pain, / Of Sorrow's rankling shaft to cure the wound, / And bring life's first delusions once again, / 'Twere surely met in thee!."
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1785
"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."
preview | full record— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)