Date: 1692

"In what a miserable condition do we count those, in whom it hath pleased the great Contriver of the Eyes and Sight, to shut those two little Windows of the Soul?"

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1701

"This may give him hopes, that tho' his Trunk return to its native Dust he may not all Perish, but the Inhabitant of it may remove to another Mansion; especially since he knows only Mechanically that they have, not Demonstratively how they have, even a present Union."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1704

"The practitioners of this famous art proceed, in general, upon the following fundamental, that the corruption of the senses is the generation of the spirit; because the senses in men are so many avenues to the fort of reason, which, in this operation, is wholly blocked up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Tuesday, June 14, to Thursday, June 16, 1709

"This way of application to gain a lady's heart, is taking her as we do towns and castles, by distressing the place, and letting none come near them without our pass."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1710, 1734

"They indeed, who hold the soul of man to be only a thin vital flame, or system of animal spirits, make it perishing and corruptible as the body, since there is nothing more easily dissipated than such a being, which it is naturally impossible should survive the ruin of the tabernacle, wherein it...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1710, 1734

"[I]deas are not any how and at random produced, there being a certain order and connexion between them, like to that of cause and effect: there are also several combinations of them, made in a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature, that bei...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

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: Monday, June, 1711

"The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a reasonab...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Tuesday, September 11, 1711

"I am unhappily far gone in Building, and am one of that Species of Men who are properly denominated Castle-Builders, who scorn to be beholden to the Earth for a Foundation, or dig in the Bowels of it for Materials; but erect their Structures in the most unstable of Elements, the Air, Fancy alone...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)