Date: 1691

"Twice every day a thousand Fancies and Fegaries crowd into my Noddle so thick as if my Brain kept open-house for all the Maggots in nature."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1700, 1717

"Thus all Things are but alter'd, nothing dies; / And here and there th' unbodied Spirit flies, / By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess, / And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; / Or hunts without, till ready Limbs it find, / And actuates those according to their kind; / From Tenement ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: May 10, 1704

"But when a man's fancy gets astride his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors; the first proselyte he makes is himself, and when that is once compassed the difficulty is not so great in bringing over others,...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1705, 1714, 1732

"Malice and most severe Strokes of Fortune can do no more Injury to a Mind thus stript of all Fears, Wishes and Inclinations, than a blind Horse can do in an empty Barn"

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

Date: 1727

"These abandon'd him to the Fury of an enrag'd Conscience, open'd the Sluices of the Soul, as I call them, and pour'd in a Flood of unsufferable Grief, letting loose those wild Beasts call'd Passions upon him, such as Rage, Anguish, Self-reproach, too late Repentance, and final Desperation, all t...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1728, 1729, 1736

"She form'd this image of well-bodied air, / With pert flat eyes she window'd well its head, / A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead, / And empty words she gave, and sounding strain, / But senseless, lifeless! idol void and vain!"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1742

"Our freedom chain'd; quite wingless our desire; / In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar / Prone to the centre; crawling in the dust; / Dismounted every great and glorious aim; / Embruted every faculty divine; / Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"My soul is dead, my heart is stone, / A cage of birds and beasts unclean, / A den of thieves, a dire abode / Of dragons, but no house of God."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

Date: 1760-7

"The very idea of so noble, so refined, so immaterial, and so exalted a being as the Anima, or even the Animus, taking up her residence, and sitting dabbling, like a tad-pole, all day long, both summer and winter, in a puddle,--or in a liquid of any kind, how thick or thin soever, he would say, s...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)