Date: 1724

"[S]o with my Eyes open, and with my Conscience, as I may say, awake, I sinn'd, knowing it to be a Sin, but having no Power to resist; when this had thus made a Hole in my Heart, and I was come to such a height, as to transgress against the Light of my own Conscience, I was then fit for any Wicke...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1724

"Vanity is a lurking subtile Thief, that works itself insensibly into our Bosoms, and while we declare our dislike to it, know not 'tis so near us; every body being (as a witty Gentleman has somewhere said) provided with a Racket to strike it from themselves."

— Davys, Mary (1674-1732)

Date: 1724

"For Nature by fix'd Laws has wisely join'd / The bright Ideas of the conscious Mind / To Motions of the liquid spirit'ous Train, / Thro' previous Traces of the humid Brain; / These, when the Soul by drowsy Sleep oppress'd / Into her private Cell retires to Rest, / Thro' beaten Paths their wand'r...

— Needler, Henry (1690-1718); Duncombe, William (1690-1769)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Now, according to my supposition, there being no active intelligent Being, who, by his Presence and Superintendency, governs and directs the Course of those vagabond Images, every thing in the Brain resembles the fortuitous concourse of Atoms."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Two Images meet, and unite to each other; these two meeting with a third, it unites to them in the same manner: and this Meeting and Union continuing for some time, at last occasions a most monstrous Aggregation, very like the Chaos of the Poet, where 'Frigida cum calidis pugnant, humentia sicci...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"These united Images do sometimes separate from each other with the same facility they had joined, just like the fashionable way of marrying among the Quality; at other times, they maintain themselves in their Union, like poor Folks, without ever getting asunder; especially when this Union is the...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"This Train of Images continually revolv'd in our young Parson's Brain; and to preserve them from being jostled out by any intruding Foreigners, who might dispossess the Original Orthodox Inhabitants, the first Link of the Chain was rivetted by Pride, and the two last closed up by those two insep...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: 1727

"For I cannot agree that the Soul is in the Body, as in a Prison; but rather that, like a rich Nobleman, he is pleas'd to inhabit a fine Country Seat or Palace of his own Building, where he resolves to live and enjoy himself, and does so, 'till by the Fate of things his fine Palace being over-tur...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1727

"Conscience, indeed, is a frightful Apparition itself, and I make no Question but it oftentimes haunts an oppressing Criminal into Restitution, and is a Ghost to him sleeping or waking: nor is it the least Testimony of an invisible World that there is such a Drummer as that in the Soul, that can ...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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]