Date: c. 1680

"While man unmarr'd abode, his Spirits all / In Vivid hue were active in their hall."

— Taylor, Edward (1642-1729)

Date: c. 1680

"The Vitall Spirits apprehend thereby / Exposde to danger great suburbs ly, / The which they do desert, and speedily / The Fort of Life the Heart, they Fortify, / The Heart beats up still by her Pulse to Call / Out of the outworks her train Souldiers all / Which quickly come hence."

— Taylor, Edward (1642-1729)

Date: November 28, 1783

"Our Maker has given us this faithful internal monitor [the conscience], and if you always obey it, you will always be prepared for the end of the world, or for a more certain event, which is death."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1787

"Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them, which grow up, and through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies among themselves, and generate a multitude, seize the citadel or the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"Those desires which heretofore were only loose from their slavery in sleep, when he was yet under the laws and his father, when under democratic government, now when he is tyrannized over by his passions, shall be equally as loose when he is awake, and from no horrid slaughter or deed shall he a...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1787

"He then seats in that throne the avaricious disposition, and makes it a mighty king within himself, decked out with Persian crowns, bracelets, and scepters."

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1799

"My mind was thronged with the images flowing from my late late adventures."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"The pen is a pacifyer. It checks the mind's career; it circumscribes her wanderings."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: March 1843

"The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1911

"Sleep scatters you; sensations come storming along into the dreamer's mind, and he is a prey to each in turn."

— Lewis, Edwin Herbert (1866-1938)