Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"My spirit is tossed with a thousand tormenting things, and my thoughts destroy one another the same moment they are conceived, to make way for more; and so long as my body suffers by the impressions of my mind, how shall I be able to hold paper, or a reed to write."

— Anonymous

Date: Wednesday, June 18, 1712

"As Nature has framed the several Species of Beings as it were in a Chain, so Man seems to be placed as the middle Link between Angels and Brutes: Hence he participates both of Flesh and Spirit by an admirable Tie, which in him occasions perpetual War of Passions."

— Anonymous

Date: 1723

"Neither cou'd our Spy, considering his Education in the Mahometan Religion, take a properer Method, in my Opinion, to disengage himself from the Legends of the Nursery, and Fables of the Schools, (as a great man calls our Infant Idea's of things) than to follow the Counsel of his beloved des Car...

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1748

"There is nothing more certain, that that there are two Kinds of Conviction, one flowing from a sudden and violent breaking-in of Truth, when the Understanding is as it were taken by Storm, and a Man's whole System of Thinking is changed in an Instant: the other a gradual, gentle, and slow steali...

— Anonymous; [Lyttleton]

Date: 1762

The heart may be garrisoned with thoughts of a "wife conqu'ror"

— Author Unknown

Date: 1764

"For when the hostile army rushes in at the windows of the body, and certain battalions of perturbations have so entered the castle of the mind, that the soul is taken captive, as it were, and oppressed beyond measure, sure, by troops of affections proceeding from the senses of seeing, hearing, s...

— Anonymous