1820s

1820

★ 7.3

I am ashes where once I was fire.

You have deeply ventured; But all must do so who would greatly win.

1824

★ 7.1

Play · Tragic play

The American continents... Are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

1821

★ 7.1

Political literature

James Monroe

1823 State of the Union · 1823

★ 7.0

Play · Tragic play

Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.

Heinrich Heine

1821

★ 6.9

Food writing

Alcohol is the prince of liquids, and carries the palate to its highest pitch of exaltation.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The Physiology of Taste · 1825

★ 6.9

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring-not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

Clement Clarke Moore

A Visit from St. Nicholas · 1823

★ 6.8

Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value: and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

1828

★ 6.0

The groves were God's first temples.

William Cullen Bryant

A Forest Hymn · 1824

★ 5.3

There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy.

Thomas Hood

Ode to Melancholy · 1827

★ 5.3

Travel writing

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one.

On Going on a Journey · 1822

★ 5.2

Walter Savage Landor

1825

★ 5.2

Brothers, I have listened to a great many talks from our great father. But they always began and ended in this: "Get a little further; you are too near me."

Speckled Snake

1829

★ 5.2

There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave-under the deep, deep sea.

Thomas Hood

Silence · 1827

★ 5.1

Speech

There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when... To dare is the highest wisdom.

William Ellery Channing

1829

★ 5.1

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern-why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Speeches measured by the hour, die with the hour.

1822

★ 5.0

Letter · Political writing

Marriage must ceaselessly combat a monster that devours everything: habit.

1824

★ 4.7

Honore de Balzac

Physiologie du Mariage · 1829

★ 4.5

A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.

1821

★ 4.3

Tis strange,—but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.

Don Juan · 1823

★ 3.9

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

1820

★ 3.8

We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

1820

★ 3.8

We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium.

1820

★ 3.8

Magazine · Autobiography and memoir

Thomas De Quincey

London Magazine · 1821

★ 3.8

Speech · Military speech

Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you.

Napoleon Bonaparte

1823

★ 3.8

Novel · Historical

Every trail has its end, and every calamity brings its lesson!

James Fenimore Cooper

The Last of the Mohicans · 1826

★ 3.8

Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to purchase.

William Blake

1827

★ 3.8

I call architecture frozen music.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1829

★ 3.8

And still they were the same bright, patient stars.

1820

★ 3.7

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings.

My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing.

Lamia · 1820

★ 3.7

Play

Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word, if illformed it is rejected in society, if well-informed, adopted, and, after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries.

Prometheus Unbound · 1820

★ 3.7

Letter · Political writing

1820

★ 3.7

Love and marriage rarely can combine, Although they both are born in the same clime; Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine— A sad, sour, sober beverage—by time Is sharpen'd from its high celestial flavour, Down to a very homely household savour.

Don Juan · 1821

★ 3.7

She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

A duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

1821

★ 3.7

Magazine · Autobiography and memoir

Thomas De Quincey

London Magazine · 1821

★ 3.7

Essay · Economic literature

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

David Ricardo

1822

★ 3.7

James Madison

1822

★ 3.7

Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs.

To Jane: The Invitation · 1822

★ 3.7

Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!

Anna Laetitia Barbauld

1825

★ 3.7

The happiest day, the happiest hour My seared and blighted heart hath known, The highest hope of pride and power, I feel hath flown.

Edgar Allan Poe

Tamerlane and Other Poems · 1827

★ 3.7

Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1828

★ 3.7

Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy.

Thomas Carlyle

1828

★ 3.7

Essay · Magazine

Not many sounds in life... Exceed in interest a knock at the door.

Charles Lamb

1820

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.

John Marshall

Cohens v. Virginia · 1821

★ 3.6

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

Clement Clarke Moore

A Visit from St. Nicholas · 1823

★ 3.6

Political literature

We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.

James Monroe

1823 State of the Union · 1823

★ 3.6

I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown.

Cooking is the most ancient of arts, for Adam was born hungry.

Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples · 1824

★ 3.6

Food writing

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

1825

★ 3.6

The three great elements of modern civilisation, Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion.

Thomas Carlyle

1827

★ 3.6

Essay · Magazine

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

1828

★ 3.6

O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days.

Alphonse de Lamartine

The Lake · 1820

★ 3.5

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

Charles Caleb Colton

1820

★ 3.5

A steady patriot of the world alone, The friend of every country but his own.

George Canning

1821

★ 3.5

Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn, and laughter.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

The Indian Jugglers · 1821

★ 3.5

Speech · Political speech

John Quincy Adams

1821

★ 3.5

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

John Quincy Adams

1822

★ 3.5

Food writing

The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

1825

★ 3.5

He who begins by loving Christianity, better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1825

★ 3.5

As civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines... In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

1825

★ 3.5

Novel

I repeat... That all power is a trust - that we are accountable for its exercise - that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist.

Benjamin Disraeli

1826

★ 3.5

Novel

Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory.

Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand

Les Natchez · 1826

★ 3.5

By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.

The happiness of life, on the contrary, is made up of minute fractions-the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.

1827

★ 3.5

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Improvisatore · 1828

★ 3.5

Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.

William Cullen Bryant

A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson · 1828

★ 3.5

When the white man had warmed himself before the Indians' fire and filled himself with their hominy, he became very large. With a step he bestrode the mountains, and his feet covered the plains and the valleys. His hands grasped the eastern and the western sea, and his head rested on the moon.

Speckled Snake

1829

★ 3.5

Courtroom speech · Speech · Philosophical literature

An advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other. To save that client... Is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; And he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction which he may bring upon any other. Nay... He must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate, it should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection.

Henry Peter Brougham

1820

★ 3.5

Recollect that the Almighty, who gave the dog to be companion of our pleasures and our toils, hath invested him with a nature noble and incapable of deceit.

Sir Walter Scott

The Talismam · 1825

★ 3.5

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.

To Autumn · 1820

★ 2.8

The English winter—ending in July, To recommence in August.

He who does not know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

Don Juan · 1823

★ 2.2

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1821

★ 2.1

In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others all she loves is love.

The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.

Don Juan · 1821

★ 2.1

Personal journal

In our whole system, national and State, we have shunned all the defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the ancient Republics.

1821

★ 2.1

Speech · Political speech

James Monroe

Second Inaugural Address of James Monroe · 1821

★ 2.1

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1823

★ 2.1

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819 · 1820

★ 2.0

Play

Prometheus Unbound · 1820

★ 2.0

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers.

The Cloud · 1820

★ 2.0

That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon.

The Cloud · 1820

★ 2.0

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.