Date: 1727

"The Soul of the Murther'd Person seeks no Revenge; all that Part is swallowed up in the Wonders of the eternal State, and Vengeance entirely resign'd to him to whom it belongs; but the Soul of the Murtherer is like the Ocean in a Tempest, he is in continual Motion, restless and raging; and the G...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1741

"He whose Thoughts are very fluttering and wandering, and cannot be fixed attentively to a few Ideas successively, will never be able to survey many and various objects distinctly at once, but will certainly be overwhelm'd and confounded with the Multiplicity of them."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"An active Fancy readily wanders over a multitude of objects, and is continually entertaining itself with new flying Images; it runs thro' a Number of new Scenes or new Pages with pleasure, but without due Attention, and seldom suffers itself to dwell long enough upon any one of them to make a de...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"There are are some Persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human Discourses which they hear, when in Truth their Thoughts are wandering half the Time, or they hear with such coldness and Indifferency and a trifling Temper of Spirit, that it is no wonder the Things which are read or s...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1765

"I said that the prayers in the Common Prayer Book were such as were made by other men, and not by the motions of the Holy Ghost, within our hearts; and as I said, the apostle saith, he will pray with the Spirit, and with the understanding; not with the Spirit and the Common Prayer Book."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)