Date: 1691

"However chast his Body may be, his Mind is extreamly prolifick; his thoughts are a perfect Seraglio, and he, like a great Turk, begets thousands of little Infants--Remarks, Fancys, Fantasticks, Crochets and Whirligigs, on his wandring Intellect, and when once begot, they must be bred--so out he ...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive, / Sense is the Vital Heat which Life and Form must give: / Wit is the Teeming Mother brings them forth, / Sense is the Active Father gives them Worth."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1706

"But FANCY, that unease Guest / Still holds a Lodging in our Beast; / She finds or frames Vexations still, / Her self the greatest Plague we feel."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1710, 1714

"You would wonder to hear how close he pushes matters and how thoroughly he carries on the business of self-dissection. By virtue of this soliloquy, he becomes two distinct persons. He is pupil and preceptor. He teaches and he learns."

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

Date: 1715-1720

"Yet should the Fears that wary Mind suggests / Spread their cold Poison thro' our Soldier's Breasts, / My Javelin can revenge so base a Part, / And free the Soul that quivers in thy Heart."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1725

"What silly Notions crowd the clouded Mind, / That is thro' want of Education blind!"

— Ramsay, Allan (1684-1758)

Date: Friday, April 21, 1727

"For though it is generally believed that few Statesmen are much afflicted with this terrible Inmate; yet, upon a careful Inspection of human Nature, I find it to be a vulgar Error; and am fully satisfied that, notwithstanding the outward placid Behaviour and smiling Aspect of t...

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

Date: 1730, 1744, 1746

"Ten thousand thousand fleet ideas, such / As never mingled with the vulgar dream, / Crowd fast into the mind's creative eye."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1731

"Lastly, from hence is that strange Parturiency that is often observed in the Mind, when it is sollicitously set upon the Investigation of some Truth, whereby it doth endeavour, by ruminating and revolving within it self as it were to conceive it within itself, to bring it forth out of its own Wo...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1734

"And if it be said that the Understanding, which is but passive it self, like the bodily Eye, cannot be called the Leader of the rest of the Faculties; it must be granted, that (strictly speaking) it is rather the Light than the Guide: for if we consider it in the three Operations mention'd by th...

— Forbes of Pitsligo, Alexander Forbes, Lord (1678-1762)