Date: 1783
"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."
preview | full record— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)
Date: 1788
"Emmeline would then have taken him; but she said no; and sitting down on the ground, held him in her lap, till Barret who had seen her from a window, came out and took him from her; to which, as to a thing usual, she consented, and then walked calmly home with Emmeline, who, extremely discompose...
preview | full record— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)
Date: 1797
"'Behold, what is woman!' said he--'The slave of her passions, the dupe of her senses! When pride and revenge speak in her breast, she defies obstacles, and laughs at crimes!'" "Assail but her senses; let music, for instance, touch some feeble chord of her heart, and echo to her fancy, and lo! al...
preview | full record— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)
Date: 1865
"Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul, / With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird, / There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim."
preview | full record— Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)
Date: 1998
"But belligerence was a poor aid to concentration, as were the three gins and a bottle of wine, and three hours later he was still staring a the score on the piano, in a hunched attitude of work, with a pencil in his hand and a frown, but hearing and seeing only the bright hurdy-gurdy carousel of...
preview | full record— McEwan, Ian (b. 1948)
Date: 2010
"A thought to mind, so to the string / plucked, or touched, or bowed, the music is, / a wrinkling of the air as immaterial / and brief as sunlight glancing on a wave."
preview | full record— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)
Date: April 4, 2011
"For in mind should be voidy wings choiring, not selves."
preview | full record— Williams, C. K. (b. 1936)