English poet and essayist (1743-1825)
Friends are most easily acquired in youth, but they are likewise most easily lost.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
The worst slavery is that which we voluntarily impose upon ourselves; and no chains are so cumbrous and galling as those which we are pleased to wear by way of grace and ornament.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
There is a cast of manners peculiar and becoming to each age, sex, and profession; one, therefore, should not throw out illiberal and common-place censures against another. Each is perfect in its kind -- a woman as a woman; a tradesman as a tradesman.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
But if an acquaintance with history thus increases a rational love of our country, it also tends to check those low, illiberal, vulgar prejudices which adhere to the uninformed of every nation. Travelling will also cure them: but to. travel is not within the power of every one. There is no use, but a great deal of harm in fostering a contempt for other nations; in an arrogant assumption of superiority, and the clownish sneer of ignorance at every thing in laws, government, or manners which is not fashioned after our partial ideas and familiar usages. A well-informed person will not be apt to exclaim at every'event out of the com- mon way, that nothing like it has ever happened since the creation of the world, that such atrocities are totally unheard-of in any age or nation, — sentiments we have all of us so often heard of late on the subject of the French Revolution,—when in fact we can scarcely open a page of their history without being struck with similar and equal enormities. Indeed, party spirit is very much cooled and checked by an acquaintance with the events of past times.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
The more history approaches to biography the more interest it excites.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Friendship, where it is quite sincere and affectionate, free from affectation or interested views, is one of the greatest blessings of life. It doubles our joys, and it lessens our sorrows, when we are able to pour both into the bosom of one who takes the tenderest part in all our interests, who is to us as another self. We love to communicate all our feelings; and it is in the highest degree grateful where we can do it to one who will. enter into them all; who takes an interest in everything that befalls us; before whom we can freely indulge even our little weaknesses and foibles, and show our minds as it were undressed; who will take part in all our schemes, advise us in any emergency; who rejoices in our company, and who, we are sure, thinks of us in our absence.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
It would be a pleasing speculation to see how the arbitrary divisions of kingdoms and provinces vary and become obsolete, and large towns flourish and fall again into ruins: while the great natural features, the mountains, rivers, and seas remain unchanged, by whatever names we please to call them, whatever empire encloses them within its temporary boundaries.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
Education, it is often observed, is an expensive thing. It is so; but the paying for lessons is the smallest part of the cost.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
Tales, Poems and Essays
On Fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled Earth,
And the pale Moon, her duteous fair attendant;
From solitary Mars; from the vast orb
Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk
Dances in ether like the lightest leaf;
To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system,
Where cheerless Saturn 'midst his watery moons
Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp,
Sits like an exiled monarch: fearless thence
I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,
Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine
Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light
From the proud regent of our scanty day;
Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,
And only less than Him who marks their track,
And guides their fiery wheels.
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"A Summer Evening's Meditation"