Date: 1704

"As thro' the Artist's intervening Glass, / Our Eye observes the distant Planets pass; / A little we discover; but allow, / That more remains unseen, than Art can show: / So whilst our Mind it's Knowledge wou'd improve; / (It's feeble Eye intent on Things above) / High as We may, We lift our Rea...

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, / What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest; / Something, whose Truth convinc'd at Sight we find, / That gives us back the Image of our Mind."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. 1703, 1712

"The clear, reflecting Mind, presents his Sin / In frightful Views, and makes it Day within."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"There is [a Comparison] of great Beauty in Virgil, upon a Subject very like this, where he compares his Hero's Mind, agitated with a great Variety and quick Succession of Thoughts, to a dancing Light reflected from a Vessel of Water in Motion."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1722

"O! what a felicity is it to Mankind, said I, to myself, that they cannot see into the Hearts of one another!"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"But leaving it therefore where we find it, I say if you see an Apparition, that is such an Apparition as we have been speaking of, not a Phantosm of your own Brain, not an imaginary Apparition the effect of Fright or Dream, or meer Whimsie, not a Hypocondriack Apparition, the effect of Vapours a...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1733-4

"For Wit's false mirror held up Nature's light"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"Or Fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, / Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737, 1743

"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1907

"'I see a Horse, I'm sure thats true.' / I say the Devil a Horse see You; / You see a Horse's Image, lain / In Miniature upon your brain; / But what you take for fourteen hand, / Is less than half a grain of sand."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)