Date: 1593

"And care consumes the minde of man, / as fire melts Virgin Waxe."

— Churchyard, Thomas (1523?-1604)

Date: 1595 [c. 1579 in ms.]

"Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature brings forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, c...

— Sidney, Philip, Sir (1554-1586)

Date: 1692

"He has clearly overthrown all those Metaphysical Whymsies, which infected mens Brains with a Spice of Madness, whereby they feign'd a Knowledge where they had none, by making a noise with Sounds, without clear and distinct Significations."

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1696

The soul may leave "the reins in the wild hand of nature, who like a Phaeton, drives the fiery chariot, and sets the world on flame"

— Vanbrugh, Sir John (1664-1726)

Date: 1697

"The Soul that awful Throne of Thought, That sacred Seat of Contemplation."

— Vanbrugh, Sir John (1664-1726)

Date: 1702

"For a Comick Poet is obliged to put off himself, and transform himself into his several Characters; to enter into the Foibles of his several persons, and all the Recesses and secret turns of their minds, and to make their Passions, their Interests, and their Concern his own."

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: 1704

"For the warmer the Imagination is, the less able we are to Reflect, and consequently the things are the more present to us of which we draw the Images; and therefore when the Imagination is so inflam'd as to render the Soul utterly incapable of reflecting there is no difference between the Image...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

Date: (March 2, 1692/3); 1708

"I have but one Child in the World, who is now nigh four Years old, and promises well; his Mother left him to me very young, and my Affections (I must confess) are strongly placed on him. It has pleased God, by the liberal Provisions of our Ancestors, to free me from the toiling Cares of providin...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: December 20, 1692; 1708

"I'm much concerned to hear you have your Health no better and, on this Occasion, cannot but deplore the great Losses the intellectual World, in all Ages, has suffer'd by, the strongest and soundest Minds possessing the most infirm and sickly Bodies. Certainly there must be some very powerful Cau...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)