Date: 1724
"[S]o with my Eyes open, and with my Conscience, as I may say, awake, I sinn'd, knowing it to be a Sin, but having no Power to resist; when this had thus made a Hole in my Heart, and I was come to such a height, as to transgress against the Light of my own Conscience, I was then fit for any Wicke...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
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: 1751
"This Speech, I own, gave me the first Reflection I ever had in my Life, and lock'd up all my Faculties for a long Time; nor was I able, for the Variety of Ideas that crowded my Brain, to make a Word of Answer, but stood like an Image of Stone"
preview | full record— Paltock, Robert (1697-1767)
Date: 1773
"Zounds! Sir, can you give any relief to a soul that is haunted by Furies?"
preview | full record— Graves, Richard (1715-1804)
Date: 1854
"t was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1992
"His thoughts, anticipating themselves hopelessly, stuttered in the starting blocks, and brought his feeling of fluency dangerously close to silence."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 2000
"I dread the prospect of the pressure of death roaming through my psyche like a wildcat prospector and producing these eruptions of unwelcome insight."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)