Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to Idleness, spoils and debilitates, not only the Body but the Soul too: And as close Waters shadowed over by bordering Trees, and stagnated in default of Springs, so supply current and motion to them become foul and corrupt; so methinks...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"Have you not then observed how a Man's Reason (like fire, scarce visible and just going out) retires into it self, and what with inactivity and dullness, every little flitting object so flatters and endangers the extinguishing it, that there remains but some obscure indications that the Man is a...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"I am indeed of Opinion, that the Ancients called Man 'Phos', that is 'Light', so that from the Affinity of their Natures, strong desires are bred in Mankind, of continually seeing and being seen to each other: Nay some Philosophers hold the Soul it self to be essentially LIGHT, which among other...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1719

"He forms our generals for the field, / With all their dreadful skill; / Gives them his awful sword to wield, / And makes their hearts of steel."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1719

"My soul is like a wilderness, / Where beasts of midnight howl; / There the sad raven finds her place, / And there the screaming owl."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1719

"Hard was his Heart, inclos'd in Folds of Brass, / Who in a feeble Bark first boldly try'd / The Watry Path and Region of the Seas, /And adverse Winds and swelling Waves defy'd"

— Oldisworth, William (1680-1734)

Date: 1721-22 [1706-1721]

"To stop my ears so hard with cotton, answered the princess, that I may not hear the voices, and by that means prevent the impression they may make upon my mind, and that I may not lose the use of my reason."

— Anonymous

Date: 1721

"My Heart do's like soft Wax relent, / And midst my Bowels flow"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1721, 1722

"With us there is an uniformity of character, as it is all forced: we do not see people as they are, but as they are obliged to appear: in this state of slavery, both of body and mind, it is their fears only that speak, which have but one language, and that not of nature, which expresses herself ...

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1721, 1722

"Dissimulation, an art among us universally practised, and so necessary, is unknown here: they speak every thing, see every thing, and hear every thing: the heart, like the face, is visible."

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)