Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"For hell is center'd in my breast, / There still its hottest fervours burn"
preview | full record— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)
Date: 1774
"Do not marry a fool; he is the most intractable of all animals; he is led by his passions and caprices, and is incapable of hearing the voice of reason."
preview | full record— Gregory, John (1724-1773)
Date: 1775
"What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul, / Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, / By Reason's light on Resolution's wings, / Spite of her frail / companion, dauntless goes / O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows? "
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1775
The judgment may mend the plan drawn by fancy
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1775
"My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine; / And in my breast the imperfect joys expire."
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1775
"Let Jervase gratis paint, and Frowd / Save Three-pence, and his Soul"
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1780?
"Little Souls, like small Liquors, are the most easily sour'd."
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)