Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"My spirit is tossed with a thousand tormenting things, and my thoughts destroy one another the same moment they are conceived, to make way for more; and so long as my body suffers by the impressions of my mind, how shall I be able to hold paper, or a reed to write."

— Anonymous

Date: 1712

"See, how resistless Orators perswade, / Draw out their Forces, and the Heart invade: / Touch ev'ry Spring and Movement of the Soul, / This Appetite excite, and That controul."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1713

"Imperial Reason keeps her awful Throne, / Above the Tumult reigns unmov'd alone: / At her Command intestine Discords cease, / And all th' inferiour Pow'rs lie hush'd in Peace."

— Trapp, Joseph (1679-1747)

Date: 1724

Shafts more subtile, may be darted from the Eye and "Thro' softer Hearts with silent Conquest fly"

— Ramsay, Allan (1684-1758)

Date: 1743

"Nor is it strange; light, motion, concourse, noise, / All scatter us abroad; Thought, outward-bound, / Neglectful of our home-affairs, flies off / In fume and dissipation, quits her charge, / And leaves the breast unguarded to the foe."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: August 27, 1751

"At length weariness succeeds to labour, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments, without any desire of new conquests or excursions."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1752

"Upon the whole, however, she past a miserable and sleepless Night, her gentle Mind torn and distracted with various and contending Passions, distressed with Doubts, and wandring in a kind of Twilight, which presented her only Objects of different Degrees of Horrour, and where black Despair close...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: September 1, 1759.

"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1761

"While Frugi liv'd / Thy sorrows kept possession of my heart, / And Love receded from the stronger guest; / Now his dear image rises to my view / So piteously array'd, with such a train / Of tender thoughts assails this shatter'd frame, / That Reason quits her fort, and flies before, / To the las...

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)