1840s

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.6

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.7

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

I wear the chain I forged in life.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.2

Novella

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 8.0

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.2

Philosophical literature

Soren Kierkegaard

The Concept of Anxiety · 1844

★ 7.2

Poem · Newspaper

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

Edgar Allan Poe

1849

★ 7.2

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.1

Philosophical literature

Theses on Feurbach · 1845

★ 7.1

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them.

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights · 1847

★ 7.1

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!

Soren Kierkegaard

Either Or · 1843

★ 7.0

The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one.

No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 7.0

Speech · Political speech

Frederick Douglass

1847

★ 7.0

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Thomas H. Palmer

1840

★ 6.9

Poem · Newspaper

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

Edgar Allan Poe

New York Evening Mirror · 1845

★ 6.9

Magazine

The more things change, the more they are the same.

Alphonse Karr

1849

★ 6.9

Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.4

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness.

Philosophical literature · Political literature

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood. God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil. For as long as men bow before altars, mankind will remain damned, the slaves of kings and priests.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The System of Economic Contradictions · 1846

★ 6.0

Personal journal

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also-He above all-is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.

Henri-Frederic Amiel

1849

★ 6.0

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 5.5

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 5.4

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.

On Heroes · 1840

★ 5.4

Poem

Alfred Tennyson

Poems · 1842

★ 5.4

Poem

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Alfred Tennyson

Poems · 1842

★ 5.4

Speech

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1848

★ 5.4

Philosophical literature

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations-one can do either this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it-you will regret both.

Soren Kierkegaard

Either/Or · 1843

★ 5.3

"A fair day's-wages for a fair day's work:" it is as just a demand as Governed men ever made of Governing. It is the everlasting right of man.

The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.

Past and Present · 1843

★ 5.3

Speech

William Lloyd Garrison

1843

★ 5.3

Lecture

The legal theory is, that marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband.

Lucretia Mott

Discourse on Woman · 1849

★ 5.3

It is not what a man outwardly has or wants that constitutes the happiness or misery of him. Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men.

Burke said there were three estates in parliament; but, in the reporter's gallery yonder, there sat a fourth estate more important far than they all.

Chartism · 1840

★ 5.2

Our manifest destiny [is] to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic · 1840

★ 5.2

John L. O'Sullivan

1845

★ 5.2

Not a "gay science," I should say, like some we have heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and, indeed, quite abject and distressing one: what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science.

In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

1849

★ 5.2

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 4.8

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths.

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 4.4

Scientific literature

Ada Lovelace

1843

★ 4.4

The advancement of the arts from year to year taxes our credulity, and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.

Henry L. Ellsworth

1843

★ 4.3

Legal opinion · Legal writing

To establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

Nicholas Conyngham Tindal

M'Naghten's Case · 1843

★ 4.3

No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused!

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 4.0

For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

A Christmas Carol · 1843

★ 4.0

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 4.0

At every step the natural light which illuminates their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty even in its errors.

All for one, one for all.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.9

Novel · Historical fiction · Adventure novel

Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers · 1844

★ 3.9

Poem · Newspaper

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Edgar Allan Poe

New York Evening Mirror · 1845

★ 3.9

Autobiography and memoir

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845

★ 3.9

Novel · Coming of age story

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.9

Novel · Coming of age story

Reader, I married him.

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography · 1847

★ 3.9

I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free.

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights · 1847

★ 3.9

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights · 1847

★ 3.9

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 3.9

Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free.

Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art.

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 3.8

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1840

★ 3.8

Thou art to me a delicious torment.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Essay · Philosophical literature

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Essays: First Series (Emerson) · 1841

★ 3.8

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.