1800s

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.

1807

★ 7.2

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

John Marshall

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

★ 7.0

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Levis

Auguries of Innocence · 1803

★ 7.0

To govern is to choose.

1808

★ 6.9

O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott

1808

★ 6.9

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that Fate and character are the same conception.

Novalis

1802

★ 6.9

Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.

Friedrich Schiller

The Maid of Orleans · 1801

★ 6.2

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity.

Elective Affinities · 1808

★ 6.2

Who strives always to the utmost, For him there is salvation.

I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Faust · 1808

★ 5.6

Letter

1800

★ 5.5

And throughout all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me.

It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

1804

★ 5.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

John Marshall

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

★ 5.4

Play · Drama (play) · Drama

Who reflects too much will accomplish little.

Friedrich Schiller

1804

★ 5.4

Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go.

1805

★ 5.4

Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither.

FIRST LAW: In every animal... A more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ... While the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears. SECOND LAW: All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature in individuals... Are preserved by reproductions to the new individuals which arise.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood · 1807

★ 5.3

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Philosophie Zoologique · 1809

★ 5.2

Speech · Political speech

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing; and in no instance is this more true, than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided by the practice of the States, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than by pruning them away, to injure the vigor of those yielding the proper fruits.

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 4.6

James Madison

1800

★ 4.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.

John Marshall

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

★ 4.5

Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

Man will err while yet he strives.

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

Law is mighty, mightier necessity.

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.9

Once a man's thirty, he's already old, He is indeed as good as dead. It's best to kill him right away.

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.9

Speech · Political speech

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 3.8

A Truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent

Auguries of Innocence · 1803

★ 3.8

The Child is father of the Man.

1802

★ 3.7

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

1804

★ 3.7

There is a smile of love, And there is a smile of deceit, And there is a smile of smiles In which these two smiles meet.

1805

★ 3.7

The atoms of Democritus And Newton’s particles of light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.

1807

★ 3.7

Never pain to tell thy love Love that never told can be For the gentle wind does move Silently invisibly

1807

★ 3.7

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

In this world I would rather live two days like a tiger, than two hundred years like a sheep.

1809

★ 3.7

Tipu Sultan

1800

★ 3.6

Lecture · Philosophical literature

Architecture in general is frozen music.

Friedrich von Schelling

1803

★ 3.6

Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.

Jacques Delille

1803

★ 3.6

Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.

Robert Southey

1805

★ 3.6

Now tell us all about the war, And what they kill'd each other for.

Robert Southey

1805

★ 3.6

No, there's nothing half so sweet in life As love's young dream.

Thomas Moore

1807

★ 3.6

I traveled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then What love I bore to thee.

I Traveled Among Unknown Men · 1807

★ 3.6

For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud · 1807

★ 3.6

Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.

Friedrich Holderlin

1808

★ 3.6

Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.

Lord Byron

1808

★ 3.6

We cannot judge either of the feelings of the character of men with perfect accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless conversation, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.

Maria Edgeworth

1800

★ 3.5

Personal journal

I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake.

Dorothy Wordsworth

1802

★ 3.5

Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before.

Thomas Campbell

Lochiels's Warning · 1802

★ 3.5

Religious literature

Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place... The inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had a maker, that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

William Paley

1802

★ 3.5

Personal journal

We walked up to the house and stood some minutes watching the swallows that flew about restlessly, and flung their shadows upon the sunbright walls of the old building; the shadows glanced and twinkled, interchanged and crossed each other, expanded and shrunk up, appeared and disappeared every instant.

Dorothy Wordsworth

1803

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever.

Denis Diderot

1805

★ 3.5

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman!... Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show us the narrow limits, the Gothic structure, the impenetrable barriers of our prison.

Maria Edgeworth

1806

★ 3.5

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

1807

★ 3.5

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Appareled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore- Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood · 1807

★ 3.5

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The World Is Too Much with Us · 1807

★ 3.5

O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering upon aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

Sir Walter Scott

Redgauntlet · 1808

★ 3.5

I love those who yearn for the impossible.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.1

And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand! no wiser than before.

Faust · 1808

★ 3.1

Who ran to help me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell, Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother.

Ann Taylor

My Mother · 1804

★ 2.8

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Elective Affinities · 1808

★ 2.8

Just trust yourself and you'll learn the art of living.

With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.

Faust · 1808

★ 2.3

Speech · Political speech