Date: 1704

"The first ingredient toward the art of canting, is, a competent share of inward light; that is to say, a large memory plentifully fraught with theological polysyllables, and mysterious texts from holy writ, applied and digested by those methods and mechanical operations already related:...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Remark your commonest pretender to a light within, how dark, and dirty, and gloomy he is without; as lanterns which, the more light they bear in their bodies, cast out so much the more soot and smoke and fuliginous matter to adhere to the sides."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: March 16, 1696/7; 1708

"I fansy I pretty well guess what it is that some Men find mischievous in your 'Essay': 'Tis opening the Eyes of the Ignorant, and rectifying the Methods of Reasoning, which perhaps may undermine some received Errors, and so abridge the Empire of Darkness; wherein, though the Subject wander deplo...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: April 26, 1695; 1708

"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: December 20, 1692; 1708

"As for his General Theory of them, I esteem it, as all others of this kind, a sort of mere waking Dream, that Men are strangely apt to fall into, when they think long of a Subject, beginning quite at the wrong End; for by framing such Conceits in their Fancies, they vainly think to give their Un...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1709, 1714

"They may perhaps be Monsters, and not Divinitys, or Sacred Truths, which are kept thus choicely, in some dark Corner of our Minds: The Specters may impose on us, whilst we refuse to turn 'em every way, and view their Shapes and Complexions in every light."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)