Date: 1667, 1710
"O be at leisure to look within, and get David's Candle and Lanthorn to go into those dark Corners of your Soul with it, and it may be you may see that within which may make your Heart to ake, and your Joints to quiver, and your Spirits to faint within you."
preview | full record— Janeway, James (1636?-1674)
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...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Date: 1727
"I answer, he was harrass'd by the Reflection of his own Guilt, and the Sluices of the Soul were set open by the Angels or Spirits attending, and who by Divine Appointment are always at hand to execute the vindictive Part of Justice, as well as the more merciful Dispensations of Heaven, when they...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
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...
preview | full record— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)
Date: 1734
"We see and feel these limbs, and this flesh of ours; we are acquainted at least with the outside of this animal machine, and sometimes call it ourselves, though philosophy and reason would rather say, it is our house or tabernacle, because we possess it, or dwell in it: it is our en...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1734
"A surprising Phænomenon of nature is this, that the soul of man, which ranges abroad though the heavens, and the earth, and the deep waters, and unfolds a thousand mysteries of nature, which penetrates the systems of stars and suns, worlds upon worlds, should be so unhappy a stranger at home, an...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1741
"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1741
"But Words and Things which he lately spoke or did, they are immediately forgot, because the Brain is now grown more dry and solid in its Consistence, and receives not much more impression than if you wrote with your Finger on a Floor of Clay, or a plaister'd Wall."
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1741
"But in the middle Stage of Life, or it may be from fifteen to fifty Years of Age, the Memory is generally in its happiest State, the Brain easily receives and long retains the Images and Traces which are impress'd upon on it, and the natural Spirits are more active to range these little infinite...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1774
"Some have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot, by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lu...
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)