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

"There is a Brain that will endure but one Scumming; Let the Owner gather it with Discretion and manage his little Stock with Husbandry; but of all things, let him beware of bringing it under the Lash of his Betters; because, That will make it all bubble up into Impertinence, and he will find no ...

— 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)

Date: 1704

"Those Ancient Men of Genius who rifled Nature by the Torch-Light of Reason even to her very Nudities, have been run a-ground in this unknown Channel; the Wind has blown out the Candle of Reason, and left them all in the Dark."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1704

"This is what I quote them for, and this is all my Argument demands; the deepest Search into the Region of Cause and Consequence, has found out just enough to leave the wisest Philosopher in the dark, to bewilder his Head, and drown his Understanding."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1704

"No Pen can describe it, no Tongue can express it, no Thought conceive it, unless some of those who were in the Extremity of it; and who, being touch'd with a due sense of the sparing Mercy of their Maker, retain the deep Impressions of his Goodness upon their Minds, tho' the Danger be past: and ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: May 10, 1704

"He that can with Epicurus content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of things, such a man, truly wise, creams off Nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Thrice have I forced my imagination to take the tour of my invention, and thrice it has returned empty, the latter having been wholly drained by the following treatise."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"The deepest account, and the most fairly digested of any I have yet met with is this, that air being a heavy body, and therefore, according to the system of Epicurus, continually descending, must needs be more so when laden and pressed down by words, which are also bodies of much weight and grav...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: May 10, 1704

"The whining passions and little starved conceits are gently wafted up by their own extreme levity to the middle region, and there fix and are frozen by the frigid understandings of the inhabitants."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)