Date: 1712, 1736
There are sovereign Lords "Whom Lust controuls, and wild Desires direct; / The Reigns of Empire but such Hands disgrace, / Where Passion, a blind Driver, guides the Race."
preview | full record— Granville, George, Baron Lansdowne (1666-1735)
Date: 1722
"When religious passions, namely, love, desire, hope and delight are exalted in the highest degree, and agitate the soul with the greatest vehemence, while reason presides as sovereign, holds the reins, and directs all their motions; this is so far from being a wild and extravagant temper of mind...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1733-4
"And hence one Master Passion in the breast, / Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1742
"So bounded are its haughty lord's delights / To Woe's wide empire; where deep troubles toss, / Loud sorrows howl, envenom'd passions bite, / Ravenous calamities our vitals seize, / And threatening fate wide opens to devour."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744
"Like the proud Eastern [Nebuchadnezzar], struck by Providence, / What, though our passions are run mad, and stoop, / With low terrestrial appetite, to graze / On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?"
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744
"Sense! take the rein; blind Passion! drive us on; / And, Ignorance! befriend us on our way; / Ye new, but truest patrons of our peace! Yes; give the Pulse full empire; live the Brute, / Since as the Brute we die."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1748, 1749
"It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke."
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1752, 1791
"Know too, the joys of sense controul, / And clog the motions of the soul; / Forbid her pinions to aspire, / Damp and impair her native fire: / And sure as Sense (that tyrant!) reigns, / She holds the empress, Soul, in chains."
preview | full record— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)
Date: 1760-7
"When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows head-strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion!"
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1762-3
"Whatever unto them is brought / Is carried on the wings of thought / Before his throne, where, in full state, / He on their merits holds debate, / Examines, cross-examines, weighs / Their right to censure or to praise."
preview | full record— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)