18th-century Poet Quotes

There are some secrets which scarcely admit of being disclosed even to ourselves.

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

"Mortality", in Songs of Israel (1824). Abraham Lincoln was fond of repeating these lines.

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.

It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long.

All books avoid, for they
Are the disgrace of our humanity,
And the assassins of the human race.
Mark well my words: the true
Philosophy consists in growing fat.

Enter upon thy paths, O year!
Thy paths, which all who breathe must tread,
Which lead the Living to the Dead,
I enter; for it is my doom
To tread thy labyrinthine gloom;
To note who round me watch and wait;
To love a few; perhaps to hate;
And do all duties of my fate.

Bryan Procter
Bryan Procter
How happily, how happily, the flowers die away!
Oh! Could we but return to earth as easily as they.

Who will ride fiery, ahead of the legions,
Nag for a steed, and crusts for meal,
Temper his sword in the heat and in ice storms,
Sleep on straw pallets, labor 'til dawn,
Bring down the armies, the walls and the forts
With but a handful of stout Russian men?

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

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

This piercing cold I feel:
my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom
under my heel...

Hener was the hero-king,
Heaven-born, dear to us,
Showing his shield
A shelter for peace.

Esaias Tegnér
Esaias Tegnér
Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid,
In varied, dazzling vest array'd,
Inspire thy vot'ry's lay;
Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread,
To range thy summer-painted mead,
Or near thy fountain play.
Now led by thy resistless hand,
Or guided by thy fairy wand,
O'er yet untrodden space;
Or on thy pinions borne along,
The bright Ideas' flitting throngs
Pursue th' aerial race.

Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley
Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

Over the mountains,
And over the waves,
Over the fountains,
And under the graves;
Over the floods that are deepest,
Which do Neptune obey;
Over the rocks that are steepest,
Love will find out the way.

With leaden foot time creeps along
While Delia is away.

The first slap-jack given me for dinner was a cake of flour, partially fried in a pan of fat bacon. I nibbled about the brown edges and threw it, unbaked, against a barn door, where it stuck for days.

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

Well, but the joy to see my works in print!
Myself too pictur'd in a mezzo-tint!

How still the morning of the hallow'd day! Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.

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.

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
Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?