Date: 1678

"A Weak mind complains before it is overtaken with evil, and as Birds are affrighted with the noise of the Sling, so the infirm soul anticipates its troubles by its own fearful apprehensions, and falls under them before they are yet arrived."

— Wanley, Nathaniel (1634-1680)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

The Understanding's "searches after Truth, are a sort of Hawking and Hunting, wherein the very pursuit makes a great part of the Pleasure"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How far such an one [one in whom "decrepid old Age" has blotted out Memory] (notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate Principles) is in his Knowledge, and intellectual Faculties, above the Condition of a Cockle, or an Oyster, I leave to be considered."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The ignorance and darkness that is in us, no more hinders nor confines the knowledge that is in others, than the blindness of a mole is an argument against the quicksightedness of an eagle"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1694, 1704

"If we govern ourselves in the use of sensual delight, by the Laws of God and reason, we shall find ourselves more at ease than if we should let loose the reins to our appetites and lusts."

— Tillotson, John (1630–1694)

Date: 1698

"I was apt to think the best way were, to let Nature spend it self; and although those who write out of their own Thoughts do it with as much Ease and Pleasure as a Spider spins his Web; yet the World soon grows weary of Controversies, especially when they are about Personal Matters."

— Stillingfleet, Edward (1635-1699)

Date: 1699, 1714

"There is no body who has consider'd ever so little the nature of the sensible part, the Soul or Mind, but knows that in the same manner as without action, motion and employment, the Body languishes and is oppress'd, its Nourishment grows the matter and food of Disease, the Spirits unconsum'd hel...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1700, 1712

"And so our Saviour tells us, that 'whosoever committeth sin is the Servant of sin'; and this is the vilest and hardest Slavery in the World, because it is the Servitude of the Soul, the best and noblest part of our selves; 'tis the subjection of our Reason, which ought to rule and bear Sway over...

— Tillotson, John (1630-1694)

Date: 1704

"For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tr...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)