Date: 1712

"She [the mind] draws ten thousand Landschapes in the Brain, / Dresses of airy Forms an endless Train, / Which all her Intellectual Scenes prepare, / Enter by turns the Stage, and disappear."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1716

"We are gratify'd to see an unexpected Idea presented to our Understanding, and wonder at the beautiful Conjunction of Notions so separate and remote before; and whatever is marvellous is delightful too; as we always feel a Pleasure at the sight of Foreigners and their Garments, so the Mind rejoi...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1720

"Severity makes more Hypocrites than any Sort of Discipline; streight lacing the Body may make us good Shapes, but there's no streight lacing our Minds."

— Shadwell, Charles (fl. 1692-1720)

Date: 1722

"I met her this morning in a new manteau and petticoat, not a bit worse for her lady's wearing, and she has always new thoughts and new airs with new clothes."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1747

"Since here defective, Heaven be so kind / With never-fading charms to dress my mind"

— Teft, Elizabeth (fl. 1741-7)

Date: October 20, 1752

It is bad manners for Richardson's heroines to "declare all they think [since] fig leaves are necessary for our minds as our bodies."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1754

"Maecenas would laugh at any Irregularity in Horace's Dress, but not at any Caprice in his Behaviour, because it was common and fashionable: so a Man's Person, which is the Dress of his Soul, only is ridiculed, while the vicious Qualities of it escape."

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

Date: 1760-7

"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)