18th-century Author Quotes

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...

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.

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson
Harriette Wilson
To live in a place where I am not, and in a time that is either past or not yet come.

Heinrich von Kleist
Heinrich von Kleist
For righteous monarchs,
Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see;
To rule o'er freemen, should themselves be free.

Of all the stages in a woman's life, none is so dangerous as the period between her acknowledgment of a passion for a man, and the day set apart for her nuptials.

Pandora's box, whence flew dispersed
All the dire mischiefs which mankind have cursed.

Perhaps when you again appear in print you may choose to dedicate your volumes to Prince Leopold: any historical romance, illustrative of the history of the august House of Coburg, would just now be very interesting.

Love's pleasure lasts but a moment;
Love's sorrow lasts all through life.

The onset of bayonets in the hands of the valiant is irresistible.

John Burgoyne
John Burgoyne
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.

Those whom God wishes to show true favour
He sends out into the great wide world.

Joseph von Eichendorff
Joseph von Eichendorff
A masquerade, a murdered peer,
His throat just cut from ear to ear—
A rake turned hermit—a fond maid
Run mad, by some false loon betrayed—
These stores supply the female pen,
Which writes them o'er and o'er again,
And readers likewise may be found
To circulate them round and round.

The tranquil current of domestic happiness affords no materials for narrative.

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

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.

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