Date: May 10, 1704

"Nor is mankind so much to blame in his choice thus determining him, if we consider that the debate merely lies between things past and things conceived, and so the question is only this: whether things that have place in the imagination may not as properly be said to exist as those that are seat...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Besides, the eyes of the understanding see best when those of the senses are out of the way, and therefore blind men are observed to tread their steps with much more caution, and conduct, and judgment than those who rely with too much confidence upon the virtue of the visual nerve, which every l...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"To this end I have some time since, with a world of pains and art, dissected the carcass of human nature, and read many useful lectures upon the several parts, both containing and contained, till at last it smelt so strong I could preserve it no longer."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"Of all the Causes which conspire to blind / Man's erring Judgment, and misguide the Mind, / What the weak Head with strongest Byass rules, / Is Pride, the never-failing Vice of Fools."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. c. 1709, 1711

"For as in Bodies, thus in Souls, we find / What wants in Blood and Spirits, swell'd with Wind: / Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our Defence, / And fills up all the mighty Void of Sense!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: w. 1702-1713, 1989

"By turns a thousand inclinations rise / & each by turns as impotently dies."

— Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718)

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: 1714 [1712, 1717]

"Her lively Looks a sprightly Mind disclose, / Quick as her Eyes, and as unfix'd as those."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1715-1720

"Longinus in his 22d Chapter commends this Figure, as causing a Reader to become a Spectator, and keeping his Mind fixed upon the Action before him."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)