Date: 1719

"I now began to consider seriously my Condition, and the Circumstance I was reduc'd to, and I drew up the State of my Affairs in Writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me, for I was like to have but few Heirs, as to deliver my Thoughts from daily poring upon them, and a...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"[B]ut to see with what Fear I went forward, how often I look'd behind me, how I was ready every now and then to lay down my Basket, and run for my Life, it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil Conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frighted, and so indeed ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1720

Justice, the "Queen of Virtues" may poize the mind in "equal balance" so that "All different Graces soon will enter, / Like Lines concurrent to their Center"

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. 1721 [published 1907]

"And if again, pray mind, Thy head and Mine / Are form'd and stuff'd quite diff'rent from each other; / *I n'er shal understand one single line,/ Thô I shou'd read thy Folio ten times over."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1722

"I had now such a Load on my Mind that it kept me perpetually waking."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in Love with me, and my Heart spoke as plain as a Voice, that I lik'd it."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"But my own Distresses silenc'd all these Reflections, and the prospect of my own Starving, which grew every Day more frightful to me, harden'd my Heart by degrees."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"The thoughts of this Booty put out all the thoughts of the first, and the Reflections I had made wore quickly off; Poverty, harden'd my Heart, and my own Necessities made me regardless of any thing."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"In short, I began to think, and to think indeed is one real Advance from Hell to Heaven; all that harden'd State and Temper of Soul, which I said so much of before, is but a Deprivation of Thought; he that is restor'd to his Thinking, is restor'd to himself."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"Now I reproach'd myself with the many hints I had had, as I have mention'd above, from my own Reason, from the Sense of my good Circumstances, and of the many Dangers I had escap'd to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all, and hardened my Thoughts against all Fear."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)