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)
Date: 1785
"I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789
"So poignant a mind in a vulgariz'd shell,/ Resembles a bucket of gold in a well; / 'Tis like Ceylon's best spice in a rude-fashion'd jar, / Or Comedy coop'd in a Dutch man of war."
preview | full record— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)
Date: 1789
"A different store his richer freight imparts-- / The gem of virtue, and the gold of hearts; / The social sense, the feelings of mankind, / And the large treasure of a godlike mind!"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: January 19, 1791
"But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1791
"Every page of the Rambler shews a mind teeming with classical allusion and poetical imagery."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1796
"A plague on stoicks! / I cannot hoop my heart about with iron, / Like an old beer-butt"
preview | full record— Colman, George, the younger (1762-1836)
Date: 1818, 1859
"Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cau...
preview | full record— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)
Date: December 27, 1823
"Now in filling my mind with them [ideas and facts], and in warming and animating me, you would, I doubt not, do me great good. And I am one of those substances, like sealing wax and other electric bodies, which require to be warmed in order to possess the faculty of attracting objects, of coveri...
preview | full record— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)