Date: 1774
"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1777
"I'd hangings weave, in fancy's loom / For Lady Norton's dressing room."
preview | full record— Mason, William (1725-1797)
Date: 1785
"I was surpriz'd, taken unawares, passion ran away with me like an unbroke horse: but I have got him under now; I can govern him with a twine of thread."
preview | full record— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)
Date: 1785
"Threads of politic and shrewd design" that charge the mind with meanings may be (or not, as it were) disentangled from "the puzzled skein"
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: December 10, 1790; 1791
"When the Student has been habituated to this grand conception of the Art, when the relish for this stile is established, makes a part of himself, and is woven into his mind, he will, by this time, have got a power of selecting from whatever occurs in nature that is grand, and corresponds with th...
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1794
"When we are suddenly awaked by any violent stimulus, the surprise totally disunites the trains of our sleeping ideas from these of our waking ones; but if we gradually awake, this does not happen; and we readily unravel the preceding trains of imagination."
preview | full record— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Date: 1805
"Your Worth and Talents will unfold, / Richer than Needlework of Gold; / The native treasures of the soul, / True--as the Needle to the Pole."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1814, 1816, 1896
"Imagination wildly weaves / Her golden labours o'er those glorious leaves, / While Judgment manages the lights and shades / Which Fancy figures, on her bold brocades."
preview | full record— Woodhouse, James (bap. 1735, d. 1820)
Date: 1817, 1818
"Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien / The likeness of a shape for which was braided / The brightest woof of genius, still was seen."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: 1831
"The sublimest poet that ever sung, was peradventure, while a stripling, unconscious of the treasures which formed a part of the fabric of his mind, and unsuspicious of the high destiny that in the sequel awaited him."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)