Date: 1642, 1655, 1668

"O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream / My great example, as it is my theme! / Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, / Strong without rage, without ore-flowing full."

— Denham, John, Sir (1615-1669)

Date: 1660, 1676

"In these men the principles are holy, the instruction perfect, the law remaining, the perswasions uncancelled; but against all this torrent there is a whirlwind of passions, and filthy resolutions, and wilfulness, which corrupt the heart, while as yet the head is uncorrupted in the direct rules ...

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1667

"Yet all those billows in your breast did meet / A heart so firm, so loyal, and so sweet, / That over them you greater conquest made / Than your Immortal Father ever had."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1676

"Nature has her cheats, stums a brain, and puts sophisticate dullness often on the tasteless multitude for true wit and good humour"

— Etherege, Sir George (1636-1691/2)

Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1682

"Betwixt violent Passion, and a Fluctuation, or Wambling of the Mind, there is such a Difference, as betwixt the Agitation of a Storm, and the Nauseous Sickness of a Calm."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1688

"I will be deaf and blind, and guard my Heart with Walls of Ice, and make you know, that when the Flames of true Devotion are kindled in a Heart, it puts out all other Fires; which are as ineffectual, as Candles lighted in the Face of the Sun."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)