Date: 1704

"Remark your commonest pretender to a light within, how dark, and dirty, and gloomy he is without; as lanterns which, the more light they bear in their bodies, cast out so much the more soot and smoke and fuliginous matter to adhere to the sides."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Those Ancient Men of Genius who rifled Nature by the Torch-Light of Reason even to her very Nudities, have been run a-ground in this unknown Channel; the Wind has blown out the Candle of Reason, and left them all in the Dark."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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

"Now I would gladly be informed how it is possible to account for such imaginations as these in particular men, without recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling into conceptions, for which the narrowness of our ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Besides, the eyes of the understanding see best when those of the senses are out of the way, and therefore blind men are observed to tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and judgment than those who rely with too much confidence upon the virtue of the visual nerve, which every l...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1705, 1712

"If Reason must not judge of Faith's true light, / How came our Guides to know the wrong from right, / Or, how their rev'rend Heads distinguish plain, / Betwixt the Bible and the Alchoran."

— Ward, Edward (1667-1731)

Date: 1705, 1712

"Reason's the heav'nly Ray that lights the Soul, / And the Faith dark that does its Power controul."

— Ward, Edward (1667-1731)

Date: 1706

"Every one declares against blindness, and yet who almost is not fond of that which dims his sight, and keeps the clear light out of his mind, which should lead him into truth and knowledge?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706

In the association of ideas "unnatural connections become by custom as natural to the mind, as sun and light"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1706 [first published 1658]

"To Dazzle, to hurt the Sight, with too muc Light, to surprize the Mind; to tempt, to decoy, to beguile."

— Phillips, Edward (1630-1696)