Date: 1704-5; 1731
"Most men seem to place it in being allowed to let loose the Reins to all their Appetites and Passions without controul; to be under no restraint either from the Laws of Men, or from the Fear of God."
preview | full record— Clarke, Samuel (1675-1729)
Date: 1732
"How curs'd the Man, who still is musing found? / His Mill-Horse Soul forms one eternal Round?"
preview | full record— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)
Date: 1732
"Malice, and Lust, voracious Birds of Prey, / That out-soar Reason, and our Wishes sway; / Desires' wild Seas, on which the wise are tost, / By Pilot Indolence, are safely crost."
preview | full record— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)
Date: 1738, 1742
"See what obnoxious Vices still remain, / Which there's no Law, no Bridle, to restrain."
preview | full record— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)
Date: 1745
"Keep strongly in the hot rebellious Mind, / Be it with Bits restrain'd, and Curbs confin'd. / The docile Horse in prime of Years is broke / To bear the Rein, or stretch beneath the Yoke."
preview | full record— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)
Date: 1749
People may "Bridle their passions and direct their will"
preview | full record— Stepney, George (1663-1707)
Date: 1754
"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...
preview | full record— Hay, William (1695-1755)
Date: 1760-7
"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
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: 1760-7
"But here the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;--is conscious of the web she has wove;--knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which virtue or vice has plann'd before her."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)