Date: May 10, 1704
"Whether a tincture of malice in our natures makes us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse, or whether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can, like the sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other half by necessity under shade and darkness, or whe...
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1710
"The Two Principal Qualifications of a Phanatick Preacher are, his Inward Light, and his Head full of Maggots."
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1724
"When all at once / A thousand anxious Thoughts that slept by Day, / Swarm'd in my Brain, 'till it resembled Hell, / Hot, dark and hot: my sick Imagination, / Assisted by the Shades of Night, would give / A gloomy turn to each Idea there."
preview | full record— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)
Date: 1730
"Whether we send our Reason's piercing Rays / Beneath the Great, unbounded Deep, / Where Storms and Tempests sleep, / Whether unrein'd Imagination strays / Thro' the black, Howling Desart's pathless Ways, / The Deep and Howling Wilderness declare / The Omnipresent Godhead there."
preview | full record— Woodward, George (b. 1708?)
Date: 1736
"Dreams were the only Work of a disturb'd Fancy, and were as far from Truth, as the Glow-Worm's dim Shine from Light and Heat; the Creatures of the drowsy Brain."
preview | full record— Chetwood, William Rufus (d. 1766)
Date: 1742
"On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd, / On lighten'd minds, that bask in Virtue's beams, / Nothing hangs tedious; nothing old revolves / In that for which they long, for which they live."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1744
"Yet still, through their disgrace [the passions'], no feeble ray / Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell: / But these (like that fallen monarch [Adam] when reclaim'd) / When Reason moderates the rein aright, / Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere, / Where once they soar'd il...
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)