1810s

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 7.8

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People.

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there- O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

1818

★ 7.0

Song

Francis Scott Key

The Star-Spangled Banner · 1814

★ 6.9

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the Lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I Love not Man the Less, but Nature more.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 6.9

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias · 1818

★ 6.9

Philosophical literature

The man of talent is like the marksman who hits a mark the others cannot hit; the man of genius is like the marksman who hits a mark they cannot even see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea · 1819

★ 6.9

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1819

★ 6.3

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

1813

★ 6.2

Letter · Political writing

Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain. And the future as the past would be present to its eyes.

1816

★ 6.2

Pierre-Simon Laplace

1812

★ 6.0

You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 5.6

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 5.5

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1819

★ 5.5

Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

Tecumseh

1810

★ 5.3

These lands are ours. No one has a right to remove us, because we were the first owners. The Great Spirit above has appointed this place for us, on which to light our fires, and here we will remain. As to boundaries, the Great Spirit knows no boundaries, nor will his red children acknowledge any.

Tecumseh

1810

★ 5.3

Personal journal

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

1813

★ 5.3

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

This is a free country.

James Flint

1819

★ 5.3

Stephen Decatur

1816

★ 5.2

Speech · Political speech

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

John Philpot Curran

1816

★ 5.1

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is stuck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.

William Hazlitt

1818

★ 5.0

To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.

He who knows most, knows best how little he knows.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.9

1812

★ 4.7

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1812

★ 4.6

Hamlet is a name: His speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet.

William Hazlitt

1817

★ 4.2

I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

The sooner every party breaks up, the better.

Emma · 1816

★ 4.0

One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best.

Persuasion · 1817

★ 4.0

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Sense and Sensibility · 1811

★ 3.9

Historical literature

Napoleon Bonaparte

1812

★ 3.9

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 3.9

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 3.9

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

1813

★ 3.9

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein · 1818

★ 3.9

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.9

Alas! the love of women! it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.9

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess!

Ludwig van Beethoven

1810

★ 3.8

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

1813

★ 3.8

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

William Blake

1815

★ 3.8

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

1816

★ 3.8

Nothing gives one person so great advantage over another, as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

1816

★ 3.8

Dark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of Eternity.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 3.8

The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy.

William Blake

The Everlasting Gospel · 1818

★ 3.8

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding.

John Marshall

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

★ 3.8

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded; That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.8

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.8

There's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms As rum and true religion.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.8

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after.

Don Juan · 1819

★ 3.8

While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Lous XVI was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in despite of the answers made at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and despatched two courtiers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature. And so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy, and George of England you know was in a straight waistcoat.

1810

★ 3.7

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen: but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.

1810

★ 3.7

You and I, ought not to die, before We have explained ourselves to each other.

1813

★ 3.7

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.

1814

★ 3.7

Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1816

★ 3.7

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1816

★ 3.7

O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!

John Keats

1817

★ 3.7

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object.

John Keats

Endymion · 1818

★ 3.7

I have not loved the world, nor the world me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 3.7

Years steal Fire from the mind as vigour from the Limb; And life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 3.7

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein · 1818

★ 3.7

Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white.

William Blake

The Everlasting Gospel · 1818

★ 3.7

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

John Marshall

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

★ 3.7

What is Hope? nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.

1815

★ 3.6

When people talk of the Freedom of Writing, Speaking or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists: but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

Letter to Thomas Jefferson, July 15, 1817 · 1817

★ 3.6

How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make A conflict of its elements, and breathe The breath of degradation and of pride.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

1817

★ 3.6

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1817

★ 3.6

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 3.6

Where rose the mountains, there to him were friends; Where rolled the ocean, thereon was his home; Where a blue sky, and glowing clime, extends, He had the passion and the power to roam.

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage · 1818

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

John Marshall

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

★ 3.6

There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense…Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.

Stendhal

The Red and the Black · 1819

★ 3.6

Short story

A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

Washington Irving

1819

★ 3.6

Lecture

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

William Hazlitt

1819

★ 3.6

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken!

Sir Walter Scott

1815

★ 3.5

Personal journal

If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found the flower in his hand when he awoke-Aye! and what then?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1816

★ 3.5

Time will rust the sharpest sword, Time will consume the strongest cord; That which moulders hemp and steel, Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

Sir Walter Scott

Harold the Dauntless · 1817

★ 3.5

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond.

Thomas Love Peacock

1817

★ 3.5

The fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1819

★ 3.5

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

Arthur Schopenhauer

On Women · 1819

★ 2.9

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.