Date: 1667
"But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly receiv...
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: Wednesday, June 27, 1711
"Not to be tedious, there is scarce any Emotion in the Mind which does not produce a suitable Agitation in the Fan; insomuch, that if I only see the Fan of a disciplin'd Lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes."
preview | full record— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)
Date: 1712
"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: Friday, April 17. 1724
"Their Imaginations are thin, and delicate; and play lightly on the Skirts of Objects: But they are too weak for solid Reasoning; and, in any Thing abstracted, and above the Pitch of the Senses, they are miserably Impotent, and grow presently weary."
preview | full record— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)
Date: 1737
"So many things freely thrown out, such lengths of unreserv'd friendship, thoughts just warm from the brain, without any polishing or dress, the very dishabille of the understanding."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"Where virtue, rising from the awful depth / Of truth's mysterious bosom, doth forsake / The unadorn'd condition of her birth; / And dress'd by fancy in ten thousand hues, / Assumes a various feature, to attract, / With charms responsive to each gazer's eye, / The hearts of men."
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1744, 1772, 1795
"What? like a storm from their capacious bed / The sounding seas o'erwhelming, when the might / Of these eruptions, working from the depth / Of man's strong apprehension, shakes his frame / Even to the base; from every naked sense / Of pain or pleasure dissipating all / Opinion's feeble coverings...
preview | full record— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)
Date: 1747-8
"Yet her charming body is not equally organized. The unequal partners pull two ways; and the divinity within her tears her silken frame."
preview | full record— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)
Date: 1831
In poetry we are "privileged occasionally to cast away the slough and exuviæ of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us, even as Ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of the rags that had obscured him, while Minerva enlarged his frame, and gave loftiness to his stature, a...
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)