Date: 1691

" And that it was the practice of Youth (who like the Sun oft rises clear and dancing, though he sets in a Cloud) to look upon distant Prospects with a magnifying Fancy, laying these weighty Matters together, I resolved now to ride at Anchor one seven years within the sound of Bow-Bell."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1708

"Besides, he has given an account of those several steps and degrees by which a Man is brought to this perfection; till his Soul is like a polish'd Looking-glass, in which he beholds the Truth: and then he swims in pleasure, and rejoyces exceedingly in his Mind, because of the impressions of Trut...

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)

Date: 1708

"And then lastly, there are others, (represented by those Glasses, in our last comparison) in which the impressions of this Spirit are visible, and such we reckon all sorts of Animals. But then, as these smooth and polish'd Bodies which are of the same figure with the Sun [i.e. Spherical] do rece...

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)

Date: 1708

"Now, when this Form prevails to such a degree that all others are nothing before it, but it remains alone, so as to consume, with the glory of its Light, whatsoever stands; in it's way; then it is properly compared to those Glasses, which reflect Light upon themselves, and burn every thing else;...

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"[I]n the planet Mercury (belike) it may be so, if not better still for [the biographer];--for there the intense heat of the country, which is proved by computators, from its vicinity to the sun, to be more than equal to that of red hot iron,--must, I think, long ago have vitrified the bodies of ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"But this, as I said above, is not the case of the inhabitants of this earth;--our minds shine not through the body, but are wrapt up here in a dark covering of uncrystalized flesh and blood; so that if we would come to the specifick characters of them, we must go some other way to work."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"[A]n illustration is no argument,--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it,--so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1768

"The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened; reduce them to their proper size and hue she overlooks them."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)