Date: May 10, 1704
"Besides, there is something individual in human minds that easily kindles at the accidental approach and collision of certain circumstances, which, though of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into the greatest emergencies of life."
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1719
"I bad him go to the Tree, and bring me Word if he could see there plainly what they were doing; he did so, and came immediately back to me, and told me they might be plainly view'd there; that they were all about their Fire, eating the Flesh of one of their Prisoners; and that another lay bound...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Date: 1719
"As long as I kept up my daily Tour to the Hill to look out, so long also I kept up the Vigour of my Design, and my Spirits seem'd to be all the while in a suitable Form for so outragious an Execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked Savages, for an Offence which I had not at all entred into...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Date: 1753
One may "blow the coals of jealousy"
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)
Date: 1769
"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...
preview | full record— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)