Date: 1767
"How transitory have been all my pleasures! the recollection of them dies on my memory, like the departing colours of the rainbow, which fades under the eye of the beholder, and leaves not a trace behind."
preview | full record— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)
Date: 1768
"I'm persuaded, to a man who feels for others as well as for himself, every rainy night, disguise it as you will, must cast a damp upon your spirits."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: January 2, 1769
"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may gather somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1769
"Nor fill my stormy breast with ire."
preview | full record— Fergusson, Robert (1750-1774)
Date: 1770
"But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. / As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, / Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, / Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, / Eternal sunshine settles on its head."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1770
A judge may sit serene "Above all mists of passion"
preview | full record— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)
Date: 1771, 1776
"'The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, / 'And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, / 'Henceforth no earthly hope with heaven shall share / 'This heart, where peace serenely shines at last."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1771, 1776
"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1755, 1771
"And yet, let but a zephyr's breath begin/ To stir the latent excellence within-- / Waked in that moment's elemental strife, / Impassion'd genius feels the breath of life; / The' expanding heart delights to leap and glow, / The pulse to kindle, and the tear to flow."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: 1755, 1771
"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)