Date: 1691

"Madam, I have not stayed for the Advice you give me to oppose that Passion which I just now declared unto you: but in all the Combats I have had with it, I still found my Reason the weaker: If I had attackt it in its beginning, perhaps I should have mastered it; but having entertained it in my H...

— Anonymous

Date: 1691

"It is usual enough for Persons, who are disturbed by two such violent passions, to change their Resolutions and Sentiments, accordingly as one of those two becomes the stronger. Elizabeth's heart did long since experience that vicissitude, and it being equally divided, between the love of her Au...

— Anonymous

Date: 1693

"Why is Love then (said the Count) so irreconcilable an Enemy to Reason, that it can never cohabit with it?"

— Anonymous

Date: 1693

"Though you may imagine she had no mean ones of her own, since (being but a private Gentlewoman) she could by their help alone make so sudden a Conquest over the Heart of a Prince, who had certainly (in so many Courts as he had been in) seen very agreeable Faces, set off with the additional Splen...

— Anonymous

Date: 1693

"O Love, thou most dangerous Distemper of the Soul! most dangerous because we do not perceive Thee, till Thou art too far gone to be cured: Thou subtle Enemy! who takest the strongest Hearts, because Thou always usest Surprise; and undermining our Reason, never appearest in the light, till Thou a...

— Anonymous

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: 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