Date: c. 10-8 BC
"quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta / percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: / omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat" [Whatever precepts you give, be concise; that docile minds may soon comprehend what is said, and faithfully retain it. All superfluous instructions flow from ...
preview | full record— Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BC - 8 BC)
Date: 1614, 1638
"The soules of Women and Lovers, are wrapt in the port-manque of their senses."
preview | full record— Overbury, Sir Thomas (bap. 1581, d. 1613)
Date: 1657
"Alas! alas! my flesh is too too weak, / And may be conquer'd; thou maist eas'ly break / This brittle Casket: but my inward minde / A jewel is which thou shalt never finde."
preview | full record— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)
Date: 1666
"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"But knowledge is as food, and needs no less / Her temperance over appetite, to know / In measure what the mind may well contain; / Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns / Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"First crept / The parsimonious emmet, provident / Of future; in small room large heart enclosed"
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1681
"Some livelier spark of heaven, and more refined / From earthly dross, fills the great poet's mind."
preview | full record— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)
Date: November, 1682
"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Date: 1683
"Invention, Memory, and Wit, should stay; / And all their Treasures in this Turrit lay."
preview | full record— Shipman, Thomas (1632-1680)
Date: 1687
"But, when arrived at last to human race, / The Godhead took a deep considering space; / And, to distinguish man from all the rest, / Unlocked the sacred treasures of his breast; / And mercy mixt with reason did impart, / One to his head, the other to his heart; / Reason to rule, but mercy to f...
preview | full record— Dryden, John (1631-1700)