Date: 1725
"I will give you the saddest Account you have ever yet been entertain'd with; but you must wrap your Heart in a Case of Adamant, or it will melt away in the hearing of it."
preview | full record— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)
Date: 1759
"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: Published serially, 1765-1770
"O, my Sister, I would to Heaven that he had now been present, as I have been present, to have his Soul melted and minted as mine has been"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: Published serially, 1765-1770
"I was melted down and minted anew, as it were, by the unaffected Warmth and Innocence of your Caresses"
preview | full record— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)
Date: 1992
"Only behind a waterfall of brutal and pleasurable sensations, thought Patrick, accepting the leather-clad menu without bothering to glance up, could he hide from the bloodhounds of his conscience. . There, in the cool recess of the rock, behind that heavy white veil, he would hear them yelping a...
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 1992
"Or--he must stop thinking about it--or [his consciousness seemed] like a solution of saturated copper sulphate under the microscope, when it suddenly transforms and crystals break out everywhere on its surface."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)