Date: 1700, 1702

"Her thoughtful Soul, labours with some event / Of high import, which bustles like an Embryo / In its dark Room, and longs to be disclos'd."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

Date: May 10, 1704

"Whether Things that have Place in the Imagination, may not as properly be said to exist, as those that are seated in the Memory: which may be justly held in the affirmative, and very much to the advantage fo the former, since it is acknowledged to be the Womb of Things, and the other allowed to ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Tuesday, January 22, 1712

"Our Operator, before he engaged in this Visionary Dissection, told us, that there was nothing in his Art more difficult than to lay open the Heart of a Coquet, by reason of the many Labyrinths and Recesses which are to be found in it, and which do not appear in the Heart of any other Animal."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: January 1739

"The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1742

"Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven, / By tyrant Life dethroned, imprison'd, pain'd? / By Death enlarged, ennobled, deified? / Death but entombs the body; Life, the soul."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1743

A disembodied mind may "In Fleury's brainy Cells, [its] Entrance hide: / Heedful attend, where Thought's dim Embryos lie: / Fan the speck'd Fire--but bend its Flame awry.

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1733, 1748

Memory is a "Surprising storehouse! in whose narrow womb / All things, the past, the present, and to come, / Find ample space, and large and mighty room."

— Pilkington, Laetitia (c. 1709-1750)

Date: 1759

"The minds of the Schoolmen were almost as much cloistered as their bodies; they had but little learning, and few books."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1775

"Momus well wished a window in every man's breast. Physiognomists pretend they can take a peep through the features of the face; but this is too abstruse a science to answer the general purposes of life; besides that education may render such knowledge doubtful, as in the case of Socrates."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1788

"She knew none of the inhabitants of the vast city to which she was going: the mass of buildings appeared to her a huge body without an informing soul."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)