Date: c. 1603
"When, however, you gave out the falsehood that truth is, as it were, the native inhabitant of the human mind and need not come in from, outside to take up its abode there; when you turned our minds away from observation, away from things, to which it is impossible we should ever be sufficiently ...
preview | full record— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)
Date: 1652
"So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and ...
preview | full record— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)
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 ...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1725
"What silly Notions crowd the clouded Mind, / That is thro' want of Education blind!"
preview | full record— 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...
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Thomson, James (1700-1748)