26 quotes
If an author would have us feel a strong degree of compassion, his characters must not be too perfect.
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
Man is the nobler growth our realms supply,
And souls are ripen'd in our northern sky.
Poems (1773)
We may think all religions beneficial, and believe of one alone that it is true.
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
Poems (1773)
I read his awful name, emblazon'd high
With golden letters on th' illumin'd sky.
Poems (1773)
Come calm content serene and sweet,
O gently guide my pilgrim feet
To find thy hermit cell.
It is to hope, though hope were lost.
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.
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
It is to hope, tho' hope were lost.
Poems (1773)
The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.
The Mouse's Petition (1773)
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.
Poems (1773)
So fades a summer cloud away;
So sinks the gale when storms are o’er;
So gently shuts the eye of day;
So dies a wave along the shore.
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
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.
The Mouse's Petition (1773)
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.
Poems (1773)
Oh! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.
The Mouse's Petition (1773)
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.
The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1825)
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.
Poems (1773)
Is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain;
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
Fair Venus shines
Even in the eve of day, with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of softened radiance from her dewy locks.