Date: w. c. 64 [perhaps much later], 1611

"For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."

— Simon Peter or Saint Peter (d. c. 64)

Date: 1688

"From out the Cavern of the Breast proceeds [...] Hell-born Envy shews her hellish kind, / And Vulture-like upon the Actions feed."

— Scot, Walter (b. 1613, d. in or after 1688)

Date: 1698

"I was apt to think the best way were, to let Nature spend it self; and although those who write out of their own Thoughts do it with as much Ease and Pleasure as a Spider spins his Web; yet the World soon grows weary of Controversies, especially when they are about Personal Matters."

— Stillingfleet, Edward (1635-1699)

Date: 1704

"For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tr...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1751

"Tears gushing again, my heart fluttering as a bird against its wires; drying my eyes again and again to no purpose."

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: January 3, 1750-51, 1807

"Rein in, on these important subjects, your imagination."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1755

"Or, the Power and Sway which the Soul exercises over them! Ten thousand Reins put into her Hands; yet she manages all, conducts all, without the least Perplexity or the least Irregularity: rather, with a Promptitude, a Consistency, and a Speed, that nothing else can equal!"

— Hervey, James (1714-1758)

Date: 1761

"To one genius it is necessary to give wings, and to another shackles; one should be spurred forward, another reined in; one should be encouraged, another intimidated; sometimes it should be checked, and at others assisted."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: October 10, 1769

"My imagination without wing or broom stick off mounts aloft, rises into ye Regions of pure space, and without lett or impediment bears me to your fireside, where you can set me in your easy chair, and we talk and reason, as angel Host and guest Aetherial should do, of high and important matters."

— Montagu [née Robinson], Elizabeth (1718-1800)