Date: 1691

"Within the inner Closet of my Brain / Attend the nobler Members of my Train; / Invention, Master of my Mint, grows there, / And Memory, my faithful Treasurer."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"Hunger will caper over stone Walls, I might add, over Hills set upon Hills, and therefore did I chuse in Affliction rather to make my Brains my Exchequer, than (like a Modest Gentleman) to groan under the Slavery of a Blushing Temper."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1718

"Set forth your Edict, let it be enjoyn'd, / That all defective Species be recoyn'd: / R---r and E---r---t are Judges fit / To oversee the Stamping of our Wit."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1723, 1740

"Those slighted Favours which cold Nymphs dispense, / Mere common Counters of the Sense, / Defective both in Mettle and in Measure, / A Lover's Fancy coins into a Treasure."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: May 6, 1736

"These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleas...

— Denne, John (1693-1767)

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750

"It ought, therefore, to be the care of those who wish to pass the last hours with comfort, to lay up such a treasure of pleasing ideas, as shall support the expenses of that time, which is to depend wholly upon the fund already acquired."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: January 12, 1760

"To fix deeply in the mind the principles of science, to settle their limitations, and deduce the long succession of their consequences; to comprehend the whole compass of complicated systems, with all the arguments, objections, and solutions, and to reposite in the intellectual treasury the numb...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1777, 1793

"A prisoner in--Impossible!--I sleep: / 'Tis fancy's coinage; 'tis a dream's delusion."

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1777, 1793

"Twas but a coinage vain / Of the distemper'd fancy! Gone, 'tis gone,"

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Yet are there some who think (but what a shame!) / Poor people's souls like pence of Birmingham, / Adulterated brass--base stuff--abhorr'd-- / That never can pass current with the Lord; / And think because of wealth they boast a store, / With ev'ry freedom they may treat the poor."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)