Sourced and curated.

1618

★ 1.0

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

In looking at objects of Nature while I am thinking, as at yonder moon dim-glimmering through the dewy window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were asking for, a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing anything new.

1769

★ 1.0

Essay

Great God! this is an awful place.

1805

★ 1.0

Personal journal

Robert Falcon Scott

1912

★ 1.0

Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state And all the fawning flatterers hate: Value yourselves, and men despise You must be proud if you'll be wise.

Mary Chudleigh

To the Ladies · 1703

★ 1.1

But times do change and move continually.

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

The Faerie Queens · 1599

★ 1.2

Letter

1826

★ 1.2

The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.

Alteration though it be from worse to better hath in it inconveniences, and those weighty.

1774

★ 1.8

Richard Hooker

1593

★ 1.9

Historical literature

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!... Thou hast drawn together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet (here lies).

If the heart of a man is depressed with cares, The mist is dispelled when a woman appears.

1614

★ 1.9

Play

The Good consists in the congruity of a thing with the laws of the reason and the nature of the will, and in its fitness to determine the latter to actualize the former: and it is always discursive. The Beautiful arises from the perceived harmony of an object, whether sight or sound, with the inborn and constitutive rules of the judgment and imagination: and it is always intuitive.

The Beggar's Opera · 1728

★ 1.9

You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.

1814

★ 1.9

1834

★ 1.9

Praising all alike, is praising none.

1714

★ 1.9

A woman's friendship ever ends in love.

They'll tell thee, sailors, when away, In ev'ry port a mistress find.

1720

★ 1.9

Song

Youth's the season made for joys, Love is then our duty.

1720

★ 1.9

Play

Women and wine should life employ. Is there ought else on earth desirous?

The Beggar's Opera · 1728

★ 1.9

Play

The Beggar's Opera · 1728

★ 1.9

That politician tops his part, Who readily can lie with art.

1732

★ 1.9

Like one, that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner · 1798

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

Bygone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope-those twin realities of this phantom world!

1817

★ 1.9

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

1834

★ 1.9

Women and elephants never forget an injury.

1834

★ 1.9

Short story

Saki

1904

★ 1.9

Wife and Servant are the same, But only differ in the name.

Mary Chudleigh

To the Ladies · 1703

★ 2.0

The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top.

Prose = words in their best order;-poetry = the best words in the best order.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner · 1798

★ 2.0

Invention... Arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

1834

★ 2.0

Autobiography and memoir

Agatha Christie

1976

★ 2.0

Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner · 1798

★ 2.1

The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.

With method and logic one can accomplish anything!

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner · 1798

★ 2.1

Short story · Detective fiction

Agatha Christie

The Kidnapped Prime Minister · 1924

★ 2.1

Novel · Detective fiction

It is completely unimportant... That is why it is so interesting.

Agatha Christie

The Murder of Rogers Ackroyd · 1926

★ 2.1

I know you Lawyers can, with ease, Twist words and meanings as you please; That language, by your skill made pliant, Will bend to favour every client.

1732

★ 3.5

It is the very same taste which relishes a demonstration in geometry, that is pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an original, and touched with the harmony of music.

When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day.

1776

★ 3.5

Charles Kingsley

1863

★ 3.5

Even such is time that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust!

1618

★ 3.5

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid, and works its effect itself unseen.

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?

1774

★ 3.5

Personal journal

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.

1816

★ 3.5

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.

1825

★ 3.5