Date: 1704

"From thence the Taylor and the Parson join'd, / To cloath his naked Body and his Mind; / The Taylor only form'd the outward Sign, / To shew what sort of Creature liv'd within; / The Priest amaz'd him in his Mystick School, / Turn'd his Head round, and made him Knave and Fool."

— Anonymous

Date: 1713

"The Stoical Scheme of Supplying our Wants by lopping off our Desires, is like cutting off our Feet when we want Shoes."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1720

"Severity makes more Hypocrites than any Sort of Discipline; streight lacing the Body may make us good Shapes, but there's no streight lacing our Minds."

— Shadwell, Charles (fl. 1692-1720)

Date: 1742

"A night that glooms us in the noon-tide ray, / And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: August 12, 1738, to Nov. 1, 1739 [1748]

"Therefore the Eyes of my Understanding are not yet open'd, but the Old Veil is still upon my Heart."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1755

"Those would seem Gentlemen! who strut the Mall, / In Waistcoats lac'd on Sundays--troll about, / Leaving their Minds undrest--all Show without."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758)

Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"We should find her, if any sensible defect appeared in the mind, more careful in rectifying it, than plaistering up the irreparable decays of the person; nay, I am even apt to fancy, that ladies would find more real pleasure in this utensil in private, than in any other bauble imported from Chin...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1790

"All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1790

"If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and ...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)