Date: 1762-3

"This glorious system form'd for man / To practise when and how he can, / If the five senses in alliance / To Reason hurl a proud defiance, / And, though oft conquer'd, yet unbroken, / Endeavour to throw off that yoke / Which they a greater slavery hold / Than Jewish bondage was of old."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"He [Reason], upright Justicer, no doubt / Ad libitum puts in and out, / Adjusts and settles in a trice / What virtue is, and what is vice."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Opinions should be free as air; / No man, whate'er his rank, what're / His qualities, a claim can found / That my opinion must be bound, / And square with his; such slavish chains / From foes the liberal soul disdains; / Nor can, though true to friendship, bend / To wear them even from a friend."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762-3

"Let those who rigid judgment own / Submissive bow at Judgment's throne, / And if they of no value hold / Pleasure, till pleasure is grown cold, / Pall'd and insipid, forced to wait / For Judgment's regular debate / To give it warrant, let them find / Dull subjects suited to their mind."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1762

"I'm speaking of thy mind alone; / Where keen reproaches all resort, / Where biting scandal holds her court; / From whence she throws her pois'nous dart / At ev'ry unprovoking heart."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

Love of fame may spur one to deeds of pith, "where courage, tried / In Reason's court, is amply justified."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"With curious art the brain, too finely wrought, / Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"Constant attention wears the active mind, / Blots out our powers, and leaves a blank behind"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

Dryden "Gave [Sigismunda] those griefs, which made the Stoic feel, / And call'd compassion forth from hearts of steel"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

Date: 1763

"With firm resolves my steady bosom steel, / Bravely to suffer, tho' I deeply feel."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)