1800s · Skopia

Showing 98 works across all media from the 1800s

Symphony · Classical

5th Symphony

Beethoven and Vienna Philharmonic

1808

Four notes, then half an hour that never lets up. It premiered in an under-rehearsed, freezing four-hour concert that nobody enjoyed.

★ 9.3

Fiction · Tragedy

Faust, Part One

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1808 · 176 pages

Having learned everything and felt nothing, a scholar bets the devil that no moment will ever satisfy him. Then Mephistopheles introduces him to a girl named Gretchen, and Goethe follows the damage down.

★ 9.2

Nonfiction · Philosophy

The Phenomenology of Spirit

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1807 · 595 pages

Hegel tracks the mind from bare sensation to full self-knowledge, each stage collapsing under its own contradictions into the next. His fight between master and slave has been argued over ever since.

★ 8.2

The Nude Maja

Nude painting · Romanticism

The Nude Maja

Francisco de Goya

1800 · El Prado, Madrid

Not a goddess but a real woman looking straight back, which is why the Inquisition took an interest. Goya painted a clothed version too.

★ 7.6

Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake.

Napoleon Bonaparte

1805

★ 7.3

Charles IV of Spain and His Family

Portrait · Romanticism

Charles IV of Spain and His Family

Francisco de Goya

1800 · El Prado, Madrid

Goya put himself at an easel in the shadows, as Velázquez had, and painted the royal family looking vacant, pompous or merely plain.

★ 7.2

Coronation of Napoleon

History painting · Neoclassicism

Coronation of Napoleon

Jacques Louis David

1807 · Louvre, Paris

Napoleon has already crowned himself and is now crowning Josephine, with the pope seated behind him and reduced to a spectator.

★ 7.2

The Valpincon Bather

Nude painting · Neoclassicism

The Valpincon Bather

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

1808 · Louvre, Paris

A bare back seen from behind under even light, with a striped turban wound round the head. Ingres returned to this view all his life.

★ 7.2

Great things are done when men and mountains meet.

1807

★ 7.2

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

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

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

Auguries of Innocence · 1803

★ 7.0

To govern is to choose.

Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Levis

1808

★ 6.9

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

Sir Walter Scott

1808

★ 6.9

The Clothed Maja

Portrait · Romanticism

The Clothed Maja

Francisco de Goya

1800 · El Prado, Madrid

The same woman, same cushions, same pose, now dressed. It is thought to have hung in front of the nude and slid aside.

★ 6.9

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

1802

★ 6.9

Oedipus and the Sphinx

Mythological painting · Neoclassicism

Oedipus and the Sphinx

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

1808 · Louvre, Paris

Oedipus leans in close to answer the riddle, and a previous contestant's foot is lying at the bottom edge as a warning.

★ 6.5

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

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.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Elective Affinities · 1808

★ 6.2

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Sculpture · Neoclassicism

Perseus with the Head of Medusa

1806 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

When Napoleon carried off the Apollo Belvedere, the Vatican put this on the empty pedestal, a modern work judged fit for the company.

★ 5.9

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 5.6

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

Thomas Jefferson

1800

★ 5.5

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

1804

★ 5.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

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.

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.

William Wordsworth

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

★ 5.3

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.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Philosophie Zoologique · 1809

★ 5.2

Hercules and Lichas

Sculpture · Neoclassicism

Hercules and Lichas

1802 · Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome

Hercules, poisoned and raving, grabs the boy by the hair and one leg and throws him. Canova almost never carved anything this violent.

★ 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.

Thomas Jefferson

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 4.6

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.

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.

Marbury v. Madison · 1803

★ 4.5

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

Man will err while yet he strives.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

Law is mighty, mightier necessity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 4.0

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 3.9

Play · Tragedy (play) · Tragedy

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faust · 1808

★ 3.9

Speech · Political speech

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.

Thomas Jefferson

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.

William Wordsworth

1802

★ 3.7

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

William Wordsworth

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!

William Wordsworth

1809

★ 3.7

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

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.

1805

★ 3.6

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

1805

★ 3.6

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

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.

William Wordsworth

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.

William Wordsworth

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.

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.

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.

1805

★ 3.5

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