Date: May 10, 1704

"Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"The whining passions and little starved conceits are gently wafted up by their own extreme levity to the middle region, and there fix and are frozen by the frigid understandings of the inhabitants."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Nor shall it any ways detract from the just reputation of this famous sect that its rise and institution are owing to such an author as I have described Jack to be, a person whose intellectuals were overturned and his brain shaken out of its natural position, which we commonly suppose to be a di...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1725

"You shall not fly, Lorenzo, said Elvira, (whose Heart began to melt) you shall stay and be as happy as I can make you; Elvira shall keep her Promise, and do all you desire, as far as she has power; therefore call back all those wandring Thoughts, and fix them in my Breast for ever."

— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The succession of his ideas was now rapid,--he broil'd with impatience to put his design in execution;--and so, without consulting further with any soul living,--which, by the bye, I think is right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul's advice,--he privately ordered Trim, his man, to ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,--or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of elect...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"Trim ran down and brought up his Master's supper,--to no purpose:--Trim's plan of operation ran so in my uncle Toby's head, he could not taste it"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)