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What, then, is taste, but those internal powers, active and strong, and feelingly alive to each fine impulse? a discerning sense of decent and sublime, with quick disgust from things deformed, or disarranged, or gross in species? This, nor gems, nor stores of gold, nor purple state, nor culture, can bestow, but God alone when first his sacred hand imprints the secret bias of the soul.

— Mark Akenside Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

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More quotes by Mark Akenside

Man loves knowledge, and the beams of truth
More welcome touch his understanding's eye
Than all the blandishments of sound his ear,
Than all of taste his tongue.

The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)

Such and so various are the tastes of men!

The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)

The man forget not, though in rags he lies,
And know the mortal through a crown's disguise.

Epistle to Curio (1744)

Oft the hours
From morn to eve have stolen unmark'd away,
While mute attention hung upon his lips.

The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744)

Heaven's all-subduing will,
With good the progeny of ill,
Attempreth every state below.

Odes on Several Subjects (1745)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Akenside (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.