Date: 1691

"Nature returns, and now tho Business had fetter'd my Leggs, and my whole Life seem'd but as one Marriage-day, (such crouching was there now to the Rising Sun;) yet all this could not fix my little Carkass, or limit my roving Mind to a narrower Circuit than the whole Creation."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"Observe again, how greedily their Souls, keeping Sentinel in their Ears, lye and catch for words; and how their Souls, in a perpetual emanation gliding from their Eyes, waste themselves in passionate Glances, and suffer many a faint Swoon with gazing."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"I confess my Mind (the nobler part of me) now and then takes a walk in the large Campaign of Heaven, and there I contemplate the Universe, the Mysterious Concatenation of Causes, and the stupendious Efforts of the Almighty, in consideration whereof I can chearfully bid adieu to the World."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"The Peasant and the Crowned Head, / The same dark Path must tread, / And in the same cold Earth both undistinguisht lie; / (Whilest the sad Soul her Voyage takes / Through gloomy Fens, and Stygian Lakes, / Unable to procure a longer stay, / Into Eternal Exile sails away.)"

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"This made my Heart dance the Canaries in my Breast without the help of a Violin."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"So that here by a dear-bought Experience, I found, that the wandering Fancy of Man (nay, that even Life it self) is a it were but a meer Ramble or Fegary after the drag of something that doth itchifie our Senses, which when we have hunted home, we find nothing but a meer delusion."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"The succession of his ideas was now rapid,--he broil'd with impatience to put his design in execution;--and so, without consulting further with any soul living,--which, by the bye, I think is right, when you are predetermined to take no one soul's advice,--he privately ordered Trim, his man, to ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,--or rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-7

"A man and his HOBBY-HORSE, tho' I cannot say that they act and re-act exactly after the same manner in which the soul and body do upon each other: Yet doubtless there is a communication between them of some kind, and my opinion rather is, that there is something in it more of the manner of elect...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)