Date: May 10, 1704

"But when a man's fancy gets astride his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors; the first proselyte he makes is himself, and when that is once compassed the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others,...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Charity, decent, modest, easy, kind, / Softens the high, and rears the abject Mind; / Knows with just Reins, and gentle Hand to guide, / Betwixt vile Shame, and arbitrary Pride."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

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)

Date: May 10, 1704

"And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Whether a tincture of malice in our natures makes us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse, or whether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can, like the sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other half by necessity under shade and darkness, or whe...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"It would be a mighty advantage accruing to the public from this inquiry that all these would very much excel and arrive at great perfection in their several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I have already shown, and shall enforce by this one plain instance, that even I myself, the auth...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1705

"But as it was not sufficient for the Legislators of the Greeks only to understand Philosophy, but also to put it in Practice; so it was his Pleasure to profess the Precepts of the Stoicks, and particularly that of taming his Passions, before he wou'd sit at the Helm to prescribe Rules of Governm...

— Manley, Delarivier (c. 1670-1724)

Date: 1705

"This Virtue is a Gift of Piety, a Sweetness of Spirit; for Clemency is of an Heroick Essence; and the Defection of that Active and Unbridled Passion, which oppugns it, and seems to check it, is the most Wonderful Effect, that they who exercise this Virtue, are able to produce, and the Victory go...

— Manley, Delarivier (c. 1670-1724)

Date: 1706 [first published 1658]

"To Ruminate, to chew the Cud: In a figurative Sense, to ponder seriously, to weigh in Mind, to consider, muse, or think upon."

— Phillips, Edward (1630-1696)