1790 · Skopia

Showing 27 works across all media from 1790

Nonfiction · Philosophy

Critique of Judgment

1790 · 448 pages

Beauty sits in no object, yet you expect everyone to agree with you. Kant grounds that strange demand, and shows why a raging ocean enlarges the person watching it rather than crushing him.

★ 7.5

Political literature

No man chooses evil, because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Men · 1790

★ 7.1

Nonfiction · Political history

Reflections on the Revolution in France

1790 · 400 pages

Modern conservatism begins here, in Burke's fury at revolutionaries who tore down old institutions for the sake of an abstraction. Society is a partnership between the dead, the living, and the unborn.

★ 7.1

Political literature

A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Political literature

Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 7.0

Nonfiction · Autobiography and memoir

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

1790 · 441 pages

Seventeen and running from his apprenticeship, Franklin walks into Philadelphia carrying three bread rolls. He later ruled a daily chart of thirteen virtues, and every American self-improvement book works from that design.

★ 6.7

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed.

Thomas Jefferson

1790

★ 6.3

Political literature

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine, that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 5.3

Autobiography and memoir

Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.

Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 3.9

Autobiography and memoir

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.

Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 3.9

Political literature

Virtue can only flourish amongst equals.

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Men · 1790

★ 3.9

Political literature

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.8

Political literature

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.8

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

George Washington

1790

★ 3.8

Political literature

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.7

Political literature

It is said, that twenty-four millions ought to prevail over two hundred thousand. True, if the constitution of a kingdom be a problem of arithmetic.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.7

Political literature

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.7

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1790

★ 3.7

It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to shew by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson

1790

★ 3.7

Essay · Scientific literature

Wonder... And not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

1790

★ 3.6

Political literature

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.6

Political literature

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affection. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 3.6

Autobiography and memoir

When men are employ'd, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome.

Benjamin Franklin

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin · 1790

★ 2.9

Political literature

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 2.0

Political literature

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 2.0

I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater than in any other.

1790

★ 2.0

Political literature

Society is indeed a contract... As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.

Reflections on the Revolution in France · 1790

★ 1.9