Year
|
Quote
|
Type
|
Author or Title
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1478
|
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour
|
Verse (collection of stories)
|
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
|
1590
|
But on his breast a bloudie Crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord
|
Epic Poem
|
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene
|
1599
|
The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
|
Drama
|
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
|
1599
|
Come live with me and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove, That Valleys, groves, hills, and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
|
Poem
|
Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
|
1603
|
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause
|
Drama
|
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
|
1604
|
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
|
Drama
|
Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
|
1612
|
Ambition is like choler; which is an humor that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity, and stirring, if it be not stopped.
|
Essay
|
Francis Bacon, Of Ambition
|
1633
|
Death be not proud, though some have called thee, mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so
|
Poem
|
John Donne, Sonnet X (Death Be Not Proud)
|
1633
|
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love, Or chide my palsy, or my gout
|
Poem
|
John Donne, The Canonization
|
c. 1650
|
For Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect loves, nor lets them close; Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrannic pow’r depose.
|
Poem
|
Andrew Marvell, The Definition of Love
|
1667
|
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world
|
Poem (epic)
|
John Milton, Paradise Lost
|
1712
|
What dire offence from amorous causes springs, what mighty contests rise from trivial things
|
Poem
|
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
|
1719
|
I was exceedingly surprised, with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand.
|
Novel
|
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
|
1726
|
My Reconcilement to the Yahoo-kind in general might not be so difficult, if [...]
|
Satire
|
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
|
1734
|
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man
|
Poem
|
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
|
1750
|
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea" "[...] (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God."
|
Poem (Elegy)
|
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
|
1794
|
[...] In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
|
Poem
|
William Blake, The Tyger
|
1814
|
And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
|
Poem
|
Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty
|
1816
|
"In Xanadu did [...]" "And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise."
|
Poem
|
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
|
1818
|
A THING of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases;
|
Poem
|
John Keats, Endymion
|
1818
|
I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert [...]"
|
Poem
|
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
|
1820
|
"Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time" "[...] Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
|
Poem (Ode)
|
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
|
1820
|
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
|
Poem (Ode)
|
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
|
1843
|
[violent feelings] produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic Fallacy'
|
Art Criticism
|
John Ruskin, Modern Painters
|
1850
|
[...] leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters stilled at even;" " [...] And laid her face between her hands And wept, (I heard her tears)"
|
Poem
|
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel
|
c. 1855
|
One face looks out from all his canvasses, One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans; We found her hidden just behind those screens, That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
|
Poem
|
Christina Rossetti, In an Artist’s Studio
|
1855
|
Wandering between two worlds, one dead The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.
|
Poem
|
Matthew Arnold, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
|
1888
|
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
|
Poem
|
William Earnest Henley, Invictus
|
1920
|
Let us go then you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like a patient etherized upon a table
|
Poem
|
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
|
1922
|
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.
|
Poem
|
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
|
1928
|
That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song
|
Poem
|
W. B. Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
|