Date: May 10, 1704

"But when a man's fancy gets astride his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors; the first proselyte he makes is himself, and when that is once compassed the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others,...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Whether Things that have Place in the Imagination, may not as properly be said to exist, as those that are seated in the Memory: which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to the advantage fo the former, since it is acknowledged to be the Womb of Things, and the other allowed to ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1724

"Her Heart was like a great Inn, which finds room for all that come."

— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)

Date: 1726

"Here I discovered the Roguery and Ignorance of those who pretend to write Anecdotes, or secret History who send so many Kings to their Graves with a Cup of Poison; will repeat the Discourse between a Prince and Chief Minister, where no Witness was by; unlock the Thoughts and Cabinets of E...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1760-7

"[I]n the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for [the biographer];--for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red hot iron,--must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

The gifts and endowments of wit and judgment may "be poured down warm as each of us could bear it,--scum and sediment an' all; (for I would not have a drop lost) into these veral receptacles, cells, cellules, domiciles, dormitories, refectories, and spare places of our brains,--in such sort, that...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgement are, like "two knobbs" on the back of a chair, "the highest and most ornamental parts of" and "both made and fitted to go together, in order as we say in all such cases of duplicated embellishments,--to answer one another."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Blessed is the man whose heart hath not condemn'd him; whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided and informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower on h...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The blood and spirits of Le Fever, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart,--rallied back"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)