1790s

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell · 1793

★ 7.3

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party, generally.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell · 1793

★ 7.3

Speech

George Washington

1796

★ 7.1

No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Men · 1790

★ 7.1

A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Friedrich Schiller

1794

★ 7.0

Speech · Funeral oration

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

Henry Lee III

1799

★ 6.9

Letter

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed.

Thomas Jefferson

1790

★ 6.3

Autobiography and memoir

You will laugh when you learn that I thought nothing of deceiving idiots, scoundrels and fools when I needed to do so. As for my deceptions of women, these are not of the sort to be tallied, since when love has a hand in things, each party usually dupes the other.

Giacomo Casanova

Histoire de Ma Vie · 1791

★ 6.0

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell · 1794

★ 5.5

For every thing that lives is Holy.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell · 1794

★ 5.5

I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.

Songs of Experience · 1794

★ 5.5

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

Songs of Experience · 1794

★ 5.5

The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner · 1798

★ 5.5

Philosophical literature · Political literature

The American Constitutions were to Liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.

Philosophical literature · Political literature

Rights of Man · 1791

★ 5.4

I compare it to something behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when by an accident, the curtain happens to be opened, and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.

Rights of Man · 1792

★ 5.4

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise.

1792

★ 5.4

Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclin'd, Lawless, wing'd, and unconfin'd, And breaks all chains from every mind.

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

1792

★ 5.4

Speech · Political speech

I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.

Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, May 11, 1792 · 1792

★ 5.4

Pamphlet · Religious literature · Philosophical literature

The church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The Age of Reason · 1794

★ 5.4

Pamphlet · Religious literature · Philosophical literature

All inequality that has no special utility to justify it is injustice.

The Age of Reason · 1794

★ 5.4

Jeremy Bentham

1795

★ 5.4

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And days o' lang syne?

Robert Burns

Auld Lang Syne · 1796

★ 5.4

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

What's not forbidden to do make bold.

Friedrich Schiller

The Camp of Wallenstein · 1798

★ 5.4

Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man?

William Wordsworth

Lines Written in Early Spring · 1798

★ 5.4

Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth

The Table Turned · 1798

★ 5.4

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine, that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 5.3

If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

1792

★ 5.3

Letter

John Adams

1798

★ 5.3

The best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of Love.

William Wordsworth

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey · 1798

★ 5.3

Autobiography and memoir

Whatever St. Augustine may say, human creatures would not perform the work of generation if they did not find pleasure in it, and if there was not in that great work an irresistible attraction for them.

Giacomo Casanova

Histoire de Ma Vie · 1791

★ 5.2

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed, Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white - then melts for ever.

Robert Burns

Tam o' Shanter · 1791

★ 5.2

Soon shall thy arm, unconquere'd steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying-chariot through the fields of air.

Erasmus Darwin

The Botanic Garden · 1791

★ 5.1

Scientific literature

Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the comencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament which the Great First Cause endured with animality... And thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end!

Erasmus Darwin

Zoonomia · 1794

★ 5.1

Speech · Political speech

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

Fisher Ames

1795

★ 5.1

Political literature · Feminist literature

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindiction of the Rights of Woman · 1792

★ 4.7

Letter

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson

1791

★ 4.6

Pamphlet · Religious literature · Philosophical literature

It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.