18th-century Author Quotes

Let those who feast at ease on dainty fare,
Pity the reapers, who their feasts prepare.

The Lawyers may revere that tree
Where thieves so oft have swung,
Since, by the Law's most wise decree,
Her thieves are never hung.

With leaden foot time creeps along
While Delia is away.

Thou tyrant whom I will not name,
Whom heaven and hell alike disclaim;
Abhorred and shunned, for different ends,
By angels, Jesuits, beasts and fiends!...
That wretch, if such a wretch there be,
Who hopes for happiness from thee,
May search successfully as well
For truth in whores and ease in hell.

What should I do if in fretful sleep
The ghosts of the slaughtered were to appear,
Bloody, pale, and wan, and weep
In front of me, what should I do?

Matthias Claudius
Matthias Claudius
No fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet us in our walks each day.

Woman, a pleasing but a short-lived flower,
Too soft for business and too weak for power:
A wife in bondage, or neglected maid:
Despised, if ugly; if she's fair, betrayed.

He gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.
Of Samuel Johnson

The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is... remarkable... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

Tyrants in the course of time must eventually be overthrown because of the continual opposition of the oppressed. It is an unchanging Law, a constant rule, the penalty is certain, albeit that it is very slow coming to fruition.

Francesco Mario Pagano
Francesco Mario Pagano
The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it.

Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.

I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,
I've felt all its favours and found its decay;
Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing,
But now it is fled, fled far, far away.

Of her scorn the maid repented, And the shepherd - of his love.

My mother bids me bind my hair
With bands of rosy hue,
Tie up my sleeves with ribbons rare,
And lace my bodice blue.

A female mind like a rude fallow lies;
No seed is sown, but weeds spontaneous rise.
As well might we expect, in winter, spring,
As land untilled a fruitful crop should bring.

This empire [Russia], vast as it is, is only a prison to which the emperor holds the key.

But a house is much more to my mind than a tree,
And for groves, O! a good grove of chimneys for me.

If ever I ate a good supper at night,
I dreamed of the devil, and waked in a fright.

Christopher Anstey
Christopher Anstey
I cannot sit still, James, and hear you abuse the shopocracy.

Again the violet of our early days Drinks beauteous azure from the golden sun, And kindles into fragrance at his blaze.

Those possest of the greatest Virtues are always least pleas'd with the repetition of them...

A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.

Common tyrants, and public oppressors, are not intitled to obedience from their subjects, by virtue of any thing here laid down by the inspired apostle.

Jonathan Mayhew
Jonathan Mayhew
The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.