Anna Laetitia Barbauld Quotes

Let us confess a truth, humiliating perhaps to human pride;—a very small part only of the opinions of the coolest philosopher are the result of fair reasoning; the rest are formed by his education, his temperament, by the age in which he lives, by trains of thought directed to a particular track through some accidental association—in short, by prejudice.

Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer, For liberty that sighs; And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.

I read his awful name, emblazon'd high
With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky.

With Thee in shady solitudes I walk,
With Thee in busy, crowded cities talk,
In every creature own Thy forming power,
In each event Thy providence adore.

It is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.

It would be difficult to determine whether the age is growing better or worse; for I think our plays are growing like sermons, and our sermons like plays.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

So when destruction lurks unseen, Which men like mice may share, May some kind angel clear thy path, And break the hidden snare.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

If e'er thy breast with freedom glow'd, And spurn'd a tyrant's chain, Let not thy strong oppressive force
A free-born mouse detain.

It is to hope, tho' hope were lost.

Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.[…]
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.

Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripen'd in our northern sky.

O gently guide my pilgrim feet
To find thy hermit cell;
Where in some pure and equal sky
Beneath thy soft indulgent eye
The modest virtues dwell.

If an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.