Date: 1696

"O! that we cou'd incorporate, be one, / One Body, as we have been long one Mind: / That blended so, we might together mix, / And losing thus our Beings to the World, / Be only found to one anothers Joys."

— Southerne, Thomas (1659-1746)

Date: 1700

"What does the World think of this holding up the Buckler, they put but a bad Construction upon it, and say that his Conscience is Ulcerated, that you cannot touch any String, but it will answer to some painful place."

— Brown, Thomas (bap. 1663, d. 1704)

Date: 1710 [1719, 1729]

"Reflection is the last and greatest Bliss: / When turning backwards with inverted Eyes, / The Soul it self and all its Charms, surveys, / The deep Impressions of Coelestial Grace / And Image of the Godhead."

— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)

Date: 1739

"Thy wounds upon my heart impress, / Nor [a]ught shall the loved stamp efface"

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1741

"'Passion,' continued the doctor, still holding the dish, 'throws the mind into too violent a fermentation; it is a kind of fever of the soul or, as Horace expresses it, a short madness'

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: Saturday March 24, 1750

"Those who have proceeded so far as to appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times, are not likely to be cured of their infatuation; but all endeavours ought to be used for the prevention of a disease, for which, when it has attained its height, perhaps no remedy will be found in the gardens of ph...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, February 12, 1751

"There are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1751

"It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1770

"Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, / The soul adopts and owns their firstborn sway; / Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, / Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: April, 1783

"Has he been at work all night without being conscious of it. Have other spirits been making impressions on his sensorium. Are there faculties in the mind quite separate one from another, which, like the eyes of Argus, may some of them be awake while others are asleep, and is the great faculty of...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)