page 1 of 2     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1743

"Mistaken kindness! our hearts heal too soon. / Are they more kind than He who struck the blow, / Who bid it do His errand in our hearts, / And banish peace, till nobler guests arrive, / And bring it back a true and endless peace?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

preview | full record

Date: 1743

"Is this the cause Death flies all human thought? / Or is it Judgment by the Will struck blind, / (That domineering mistress of the soul,) / Like him so strong, by Delilah the fair?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

preview | full record

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Then the inexpressive strain / Diffuses its inchantment: fancy dreams / Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, / And vales of bliss: the intellectual power / Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, / And smiles: the passions, gently sooth'd away, / Sink to divine repose, and love and joy /...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

preview | full record

Date: 1746

One's sires's "great soul" may respire in one's breast

— Ruffhead, James

preview | full record

Date: 1747-8

"If in look, if in speech, a girl waves way to undue levity, depend upon it, the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

preview | full record

Date: 1760-7

"But for sleep--I know I shall make nothing of it before I begin--I am no dab at your fine sayings in the first place--and in the next, I cannot for my soul set a grave face upon a bad matter, and tell the world--'tis the refuge of the unfortunate--the enfranchisement of the prisoner--the downy l...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

preview | full record

Date: 1770

"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

preview | full record

Date: 1774

"It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

preview | full record

Date: 1774

"It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

preview | full record

Date: 1781

"I have been speaking hitherto of a morning saunter; for in the evening there generally is, on St. Mark's Place, such a mixed multitude of Jews, Turks, and Christians; lawyers, knaves, and pickpockets; mountebanks, old women, and physicians; women of quality with masks; strumpets barefaced; and, ...

— Moore, John (1729-1802)

preview | full record

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.