Date: 1682

"Fancy is but the Feather of the Pen; / Reason is that substantial useful part, / Which gains the Head, while t'other wins the Heart."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: 1682

"A Crowd of Vertues fill your Princely Breast."

— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)

Date: November, 1682

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led / From cause to cause, to Nature's secret head."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll, / Without a centre where to fix the soul."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Heav'n's early care prescrib'd for every age; / First, in the soul, and after, in the page."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"They, who the written rule had never known, / Were to themselves both rule and law alone: / To nature's plain indictment they shall plead; / And, by their conscience, be condemn'd or freed."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)