Date: 1667

"It's to the Castle of the Heart a Wall / Of Brass: it is a Christians coat of Mail, / How many do for want of it miscarry!"

— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell / Of fancy, my internal sight"

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1692

"Suspence that torture of the Mind, / Long had our Thoughts in doubts dark Cave confin'd"

— Ames, Richard (bap. 1664?, d. 1692)

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: 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: 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: 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)