Date: May 10, 1704

"Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1719

"I call'd a Council, that is to say, in my Thoughts, whether I should take back the Raft, but this appear'd impracticable."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"It is as impossible as needless, to set down the innumerable Crowd of Thoughts that whirl'd through that great Thorowfair of the Brain, the Memory, in this Night's Time."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

One may have "several times loud Calls from [his] Reason and [his] more composed Judgment to go home"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722

"[A]s to the Arguments which my Reason dictated for perswading me to lay down, Avarice stept in and said, go on, you have had very good luck, go on, till you have gotten Four or Five Hundred Pound, and then you shall leave off, and then you may live easie without working at all."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1722, 1723

"For Jesus sake, remove not my Distress, / Till free Triumphant Grace shall Reposess / The Vacant Throne; from whence my Sins Depart, / And make a willing Captive of my Heart."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"All these Thoughts, and many more, crowded in so fast, I say, upon me, that I wanted to give Vent to them, and get rid of him, and was very glad when he was gone away"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"[S]o with my Eyes open, and with my Conscience, as I may say, awake, I sinn'd, knowing it to be a Sin, but having no Power to resist; when this had thus made a Hole in my Heart, and I was come to such a height, as to transgress against the Light of my own Conscience, I was then fit for any Wicke...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in Wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by Conscience; and that Centinel once doz'd, sleeps fast, not to be awaken'd while the Tide of Pleasure continues to flow, or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ourselves again."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1735

"Imagination, Fancy, and Invention, they are wholly Strangers to, nor have any Words in their Language by which those Ideas can be expressed; the whole Compass of their Thoughts and Mind, being shut up within the two forementioned Sciences"

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)