Date: 1700

"What does the World think of this holding up the Buckler, they put but a bad Construction upon it, and say that his Conscience is Ulcerated, that you cannot touch any String, but it will answer to some painful place."

— Brown, Thomas (bap. 1663, d. 1704)

Date: 1704

"Who then wou'd court the Pomp of guilty Power, / When the Mind sickens at the weary Shew, / And flies to temporary Death for Ease."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: May 10, 1704

"And indeed it seems not unreasonable that books, the children of the brain, should have the honour to be christened with variety of names, as well as other infants of quality."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thus determining him, if we consider that the debate merely lies between things past and things conceived, and so the question is only this: whether things that have place in the imagination may not as properly be said to exist as those that are seat...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1708, 1714

"They are certainly as ill Physicians in the Body-Politick, who wou'd needs be tampering with these mental Eruptions; and under the specious pretence of healing this Itch of Superstition, and saving Souls from the Contagion of Enthusiasm, shou'd set all Nature in an uproar, and turn a few innocen...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1710 [1719, 1729]

"Reflection is the last and greatest Bliss: / When turning backwards with inverted Eyes, / The Soul it self and all its Charms, surveys, / The deep Impressions of Coelestial Grace / And Image of the Godhead."

— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1712

"Our Operator, before he engaged in this Visionary Dissection, told us, that there was nothing in his Art more difficult than to lay open the Heart of a Coquet, by reason of the many Labyrinths and Recesses which are to be found in it, and which do not appear in the Heart of any other Animal."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1712

"When Man with Reason dignify'd is born, / No Images his naked Mind adorn: / No Sciences or Arts enrich his Brain, / Nor Fancy yet displays her pictur'd Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1714

"But when a monad has organs that are adjusted in such a way that, through them, there is contrast and distinction among the impressions they receive, and consequently contrast and distinction in the perceptions that represent them [in the monads] (as, for example, when the rays of light are conc...

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1714, 1723

"The passing Minds their former Load sustain, / Are born, tho' loth, and sheath'd in Flesh again."

— Hughes, Jabez (1685-1731)