Date: 1704

"A master workman shall blow his nose so powerfully as to pierce the hearts of his people, who were disposed to receive the excrements of his brain with the same reverence as the issue of it."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1713

"The Stoical Scheme of Supplying our Wants by lopping off our Desires, is like cutting off our Feet when we want Shoes."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1715

"The Temper of a Child misled by Vice or Mistake, like a dislocated Bone, is easie to be reduc'd into its Place, if taken in time; but if suffer'd to remain in its dislocated Position, a callous Substance fills up the empty Space, and by neglect grows equally hard with the Bone, and resisting the...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"In Venus the Heat would boil the Water, and consequently the Blood in the Body, and a Set of human Bodies must be form'd that could live always in a hot Bath, and neither sweat out their Souls, or melt their Bodies."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"Homer's Notion of the State of the Dead, was something like the ancient Philosophy of the Aegyptians, which gave the Soul a Shape like the Body, and that it was only a Receptacle of the Mind; the Mind they made to be the sublime and superior Part, and that only."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"It were easie to confute these weak pretences to Chance and Incident, and to show the necessity of an intelligent Being; but that is not my work: I am not upon the Reality of such an intelligent Being, but the Reality of its ordinary and extraordinary actings, the Agents it employs, and the mann...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"But 'tis easily solv'd, by answering that it is but a seeming Contradiction, for both the Apparitions are visible, only not to the same Optick Powers; the Apparition in Dream is visible to the intellectual sight, to the Eye of the Soul; and the Day-light Apparition is visible to the common ordin...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"And from hence also it is evident that Dreams are sometimes to be call'd, and really are, Apparitions, as much as those other visible Apparitions which are seen when we are (as we call it) broad awake; that Apparition is to the Eyes of the Soul, and as it is so, it may be seen as well sleeping a...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"But as it might be a kind Messenger from another part of the invisible World, where his approaching Fate was known, and who having given him this Notice, left his Reformation in his own Power, and laid the Necessity of it before the Eyes of his Reason, as well as of his Conscience, and that afte...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"Sure, said I, my Cousin M-- D-- must have the clearest Conscience in the Universe, he has not the least Scar upon his Inside."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)