Date: 1665

"If I had not elsewhere display'd the Evil and Danger of Idleness, and represented it as a thing, which, though we should admit not to be in it self a sin, yet may easily prove a greater mischief than a very great one, by at once tempting the Tempter to tempt us, and exposing the empty Soul, like...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

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: From Tuesday May 30. to Thursday June 1. 1710

"In a Word, the Beauties and the Charms of Nature and of Art court all my Faculties, refresh the Fibres of the Brain, and smooth every Avenue of Thought. What pleasing Meditations, what agreeable Wanderings of the Mind, and what delicious Slumbers, have I enjoyed here?"

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1713

"Sometimes, to wander through perfumed groves, or enamelled meadows, in the fancy of a poet."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1732

"You must know, said he, that the mind of man may be fitly compared to a piece of land. What stubbing, ploughing, digging, and harrowing is to the one, that thinking, reflecting, examining is to the other."

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: 1757

"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer s...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"Now the imagination is the most extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impres...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Oh thou possessor of heavenly wisdom, would be this separation, this immeasurable distance from my friends, were I not able thus to delineate my heart upon paper, and to send thee daily a map of my mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1790

"This sort of people are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man, that they have totally forgot his nature. Without opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping up those that lead to the heart."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1790

"But those who will stand upon that elevation of reason, which places centuries under our eye, and brings things to the true point of comparison, which obscures little names, and effaces the colours of little parties, and to which nothing can ascend but the spirit and moral quality of human actio...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)