Date: 1700, 1705

"For Sense, like Water, is but Wit condense, / And Wit, like Air, is rarify'd from Sense."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit without Sense is like the Laughing-Evil, / And Sense unmix'd with Fancy is the D---l."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the French, performs before it thinks, / And thoughtful Sense without Performance sinks."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1701

"He [Good King Bacchus] does the chaos of the head refine, / And atom-thoughts jump into words by wine"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1701

"Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns; / For all's condens'd before the flame returns; The fermentation's of so weak a matter, / The humid damps the fume, and runs it all to water."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Thus far, I suppose, will easily be granted me; and then it will follow that, as the face of nature never produces rain but when it is overcast and disturbed, so human understanding, seated in the brain, must be troubled and overspread by vapours ascending from the lower faculties to water the ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"For, some think that the spirit is apt to feed on the flesh, like hungry wines upon raw beef."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other Creature, but of drawing, and spinning out all from your self; That is to say, if we may judge of the Liquor in the Vessel by what issues out, You possess a good plentiful Store of Dirt and Poison in your Breast; And, tho' I would by no means, less...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)