Date: 1700

"Her Night-gown hanging loose, discover’d her charming Bosom, which cou’d bear no Name, but Transport, Wonder and Extasy, all which struck his Soul, as soon as the Object hit his Eye; her Breasts with an easy Heaving, show’d the Smoothness of her Soul and of her Skin; their Motions were so langui...

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

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: w. 1684, 1702

"These rugged Walls, less grievous are to me, / Than those bedeck'd with curious Arras be / T'a guilty Conscience; to a wounded Heart, / A Palace cannot palliate that smart: / Tho' drunk with Pleasure, dull with Opiates, / Some seem as Senseless of their sad Estates, / Till on their Dying-Beds Co...

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

Date: 1703

"Distorted Nature shakes at the Controul, / With strong Convulsions rends my strugling Soul; / Each vital String cracks with th' unequal Strife, / Departing Love racks like departing Life; / Yet there the Sorrow ceases with the Breath, / But Love each day renews th' torturing scene of Death."

— Egerton [née Fyge; other married name Field], Sarah (1670-1723)

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: 1712 [1706-1721]

"Sir, said the young man, for God’s sake do not stop me, let me go, I cannot without horror look upon that abominable barber; though he is born in a country where all the natives are whites, he resembles an Ethiopian; and when all is come to all, his soul is yet blacker and yet more horrible than...

— Anonymous