1690s · Skopia

Showing 40 works across all media from the 1690s

Play · Tragic play

Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

William Congreve

1697

★ 8.8

Treatise · Political literature

Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 7.2

Fiction · Tragedy

Iphigenia; Phaedra; Athaliah

1691 · 317 pages

Phaedra confesses she wants her stepson, a father is ordered to sacrifice his daughter for a favorable wind, and a hidden boy threatens a usurping queen. Racine packs this into polite rhymed couplets.

★ 7.2

Nonfiction · Philosophy

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1690 · 416 pages

Nothing is in the mind at birth, Locke says. It is blank paper, and everything you know arrives through the senses or through watching your mind work. British empiricism runs out from there.

★ 7.1

Look round the habitable world! how few Know their own good; or knowing it, pursue.

Satires of Juvenal · 1693

★ 7.0

The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine

1694 · 504 pages

La Fontaine rewrote Aesop's animals as a comedy of French manners: the ant turns the cicada away, the fox flatters the crow out of his cheese. French children still learn them by heart.

★ 6.0

Philosophical literature

It is one thing, to show a man that he is in an error; and another, to put him in possession of truth.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding · 1690

★ 5.5

Treatise · Political literature

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

Second Treatise of Civil Government · 1690

★ 5.5

The months and days are the travelers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers... I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming.

1694

★ 5.3

Philosophical literature

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?... Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding · 1690

★ 4.5

Religious literature

That there is a Devil, is a Thing Doubted by none but such as are under the Influence of the Devil. For any to Deny the Being of a Devil must be from an Ignorance or Profaneness, worse than diabolical.

The Wonders of the Invisible World · 1693

★ 4.4

Essay · Philosophical literature

Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 3.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 3.8

Treatise · Political literature

The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

Treatise · Political literature

Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

Treatise · Political literature

The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 3.7

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Virtue is harder to be got, than a Knowledge of the World; and, if lost in a young Man, is seldom recover'd.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education · 1693

★ 3.7

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

He that will have his Son have a Respect for him and his Orders, must himself have a great Reverence for his Son.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education · 1693

★ 3.7

Play · Comedy (play)

No time like the present.

Delarivier Manley

1696

★ 3.7

She floats, she hesitates; in a word, she's a woman.

1691

★ 3.6

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

Good and Evil, Reward and Punishment, are the only Motives to a rational Creature: These are the Spur and Reins whereby all Mankind are set on Work, and guided.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education · 1693

★ 3.6

Play · Comedy (play)

Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.

William Congreve

1693

★ 3.6

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

1694

★ 3.5

Play · Comedy (play)

Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand.

William Congreve

1695

★ 3.5

Essay · Feminist literature

Fetters of gold are still fetters, and the softest lining can never make them so easy as liberty.

An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex · 1696

★ 3.5

Why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, God Almighty would never have given them capacities.

1697

★ 3.5

War, he sung, is Toil and Trouble; Honour, but an empty Bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying; If the World be worth thy winning, Think, O think it worth enjoying.

1697

★ 3.5

Essay · Philosophical literature

All men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.1

Essay · Philosophical literature

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.1

Treatise · Political literature

Man...has by nature a power...to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men.

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 2.1

Essay · Philosophical literature

Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end.

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.0

Treatise · Political literature · Philosophical literature

The Rod, which is the only Instrument of Government that Tutors generally know, or ever think of, is the most unfit of any to be us'd in Education.

Some Thoughts Concerning Education · 1693

★ 2.0

Genius must be born, and never can be taught.

To My Dear Friend, Mr. Congreve, On His Comedy Called The Double-Dealer · 1694

★ 2.0

Play · Comedy (play)

For love is but discovery: When that is made, the pleasure's done.

Thomas Southerne

1690

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play)

Eternity was in that moment.

William Congreve

1693

★ 1.9

Necessity is the mother of invention.

1694

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play)

I know that's a secret, for it's whispered everywhere.

William Congreve

1695

★ 1.9

Play · Comedy (play) · Comedy

No man worth having is true to his wife, or can be true to his wife, or ever was, or ever will be so.

Sir John Vanbrugh

The Relapse · 1696

★ 1.9

Play · Tragic play

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.

William Congreve

1697

★ 1.1