Date: 1733-4

"So, cast and mingled with his very frame, / The mind's disease, its ruling passion came: / Each vital humour which should feed the whole, / Soon flows to this, in body and in soul."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Nature its mother, Habit is its nurse; / Wit, Spirit, Faculties, but make it worse; / Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r; / As Heaven's blest beam turns vinegar more sowr; / We wretched subjects tho' to lawful sway, / In this weak queen, some fav'rite still obey."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, / Is emulation in the learn'd or brave:"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"'Tis in the ruling Passion: there alone, / The wild are constant, and the cunning known, / The fool consistent, and the false sincere; / Priests, Princes, Women, no dissemblers here."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"Clodio, the Scorn and Wonder of our days, / Whose ruling passion was the Lust of Praise."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1734

"And you! brave Cobham, to the latest breath, / Shall feel your ruling Passion strong in death."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1733-4

"Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; / Reason's comparing balance rules the whole."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1735, 1736

"In Men, we various Ruling Passions find, / In Women, two almost divide the kind; / Those, only fix'd, they first or last obey, / The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1737

"With Terrors round can Reason hold her throne / Despise the known, nor tremble at th'unknown?"

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1739, 1740

"Was there one joy, whose image does not last? / But that One; most extatic, most refin'd, / Reigns fresh, and will for ever in my mind, / With such a power of charms it storm'd my soul, / That nothing ever can it's strength controul."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)