Date: 1783
"Some, indeed, there are, who, by a strength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole composition, preserve the reader's mind always in a tone nearly allied to the Sublime; for which reason they may, in a limited sense, merit the name of continue...
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1783
"[W]hat Horace observes of words is equally true of thoughts ... every superfluity is lost, like water poured into a vessel already full."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1784
"The minds of these, our fellow-creatures, that are now drowned in ignorance, being thus opened and improved, the pale of reason would be enlarged; Christianity would receive new strength; liberty new subjects."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1785
"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)