Date: 1715-1720

"And yet no dire Presage so wounds my Mind, / My Mother's Death, the Ruin of my Kind, / Not Priam 's hoary Hairs defil'd with Gore, / Not all my Brothers gasping on the Shore; / As thine, Andromache!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1716

"But the greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to be Ghosts unto our own Eyes, and while we are so sharpsighted as to look thorough others, to be invisible to our selves; for the inward Eyes are more fallacious than the outward."

— Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)

Date: 1718

Were it not for the Optic Nerves, the eyes might conspire the ruin of the mind: "That They shou'd see and She be blind."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"Black Guilt involves the World in horrid Night, / And clouds our Intellectual Sight."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: c. 1718 [published 1907]

"My mind like Telephus's hurt is found. */ The cause that gave can only Cure the wound."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1719

"I expected every Wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the Ship fell down, as I thought, in the Trough or Hollow of the Sea, we should never rise more; and in this Agony of Mind, I made many Vows and Resolutions, that if it would please God here to spare my Life this one Voyage, i...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"In a Word, I had nothing about me but a Knife, a Tobacco-pipe, and a little Tobacco in a Box; this was all my Provision, and this threw me into terrible Agonies of Mind, that for a while I run about like a Mad-man."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I threw down the Book, and with my Heart as well as my Hands lifted up to Heaven, in a Kind of Extasy of Joy, I cry'd out aloud, Jesus, thou Son of David, Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me Repentance!

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"I found indeed some Intervals of Reflection, and the serious Thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes, but I shook them off, and rouz'd my self from them as it were from a Distemper, and applying my self to Drinking and Company, soon master'd the Return of those Fits, for so...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"Then terrible Thoughts rack'd my Imagination about their having found my Boat, and that there were People here; and that if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater Numbers and devour me; that if it should happen so that they should not find me, yet they would find my Enclosure, de...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)