Date: Saturday, May 7, to Tuesday, May 10, 1709

"The next, as I said, I went to was a common swearer: never was creature so puzzled as myself when I came first to view his brain; half of it was worn out, and filled up with mere expletives, that had nothing to do with any other parts of the texture."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Saturday, May 7, to Tuesday, May 10, 1709

"When we first take our place about a man, the receptacles of the pericranium are immediately searched. In his, I found no one ordinary trace of thinking; but strong passion, violent desires, and a continued series of different changes, had torn it to pieces."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: From Thursd. Febr. 9. to Saturd. Febr. 11. 1710

"The Mind of Man in a long Life will become a Magazine of Wisdom or Folly, and will consequently discharge it self in something impertinent or improving."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Wednesday, August 1, 1711

"Thou art a Person of a light Mind; thy Drum is a Type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Wednesday, November 21, 1711

"There is a Creature who has all the Organs of Speech, a tolerable good Capacity for conceiving what is said to it, together with a pretty proper Behaviour in all the Occurrences of common Life; but naturally very vacant of Thought in it self, and therefore forced to apply it self to foreign Assi...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Wednesday, November 21, 1711

"This Curiosity, without Malice or Self-interest, lays up in the Imagination a Magazine of Circumstances which cannot but entertain when they are produced in Conversation."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)