Date: 1709, 1714

"They wou'd new frame the Human Heart; and have a mighty Fancy to reduce all its Motions, Ballances and Weights, to that one Principle and Foundation of a cool and deliberate Selfishness."

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

Date: 1712

"See, how resistless Orators perswade, / Draw out their Forces, and the Heart invade: / Touch ev'ry Spring and Movement of the Soul, / This Appetite excite, and That controul."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1712

"Tell us, Lucretius, Epicurus, tell, / And you in Wit unrival'd shall excel, / How thro' the outward Sense the Object flies, / How in the Soul her Images arise. / What Thinking, what Perception is, explain; / What all the airy Creatures of the Brain; / How to the Mind a Thought reflected goes, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1719

"There are some secret moving Springs in the Affections, which when they are set a going by some Object in View, or be it some Object, though not in View, yet render'd present to the Mind by the Power of Imagination, that Motion carries out the Soul by its Impetuosity to such violent eager Embrac...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1723

"Can'st say what diff'rent Turns the Spirits take, / When they of diff'rent Kinds Impressions make; / What vital Springs those Spirits in their Flight / Strike to cause Torment, what to give Delight."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1734

"How shall the Wheel of the Imagination that's continually in motion, be either stop'd or regulated?"

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)

Date: 1733-4

"Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; / Reason's comparing balance rules the whole."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Passion's fierce illapse / Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies / Of daily impulse keeps the elastic powers / Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew / By that collision all the fine machine: / Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees / Incumbering, choak at last what heaven design'd ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)