Date: 1704

"Others rather believe there is a perpetual game at leap-frog between both, and sometimes the flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the spirit; adding that the former, while it is in the state of a rider, wears huge Rippon spurs, and when it comes to the turn of be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Remark your commonest pretender to a light within, how dark, and dirty, and gloomy he is without; as lanterns which, the more light they bear in their bodies, cast out so much the more soot and smoke and fuliginous matter to adhere to the sides."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Upon these and the like reasons, certain objectors pretend to put it beyond all doubt that there must be a sort of preternatural spirit, possessing the heads of the modern saints; and some will have it to be the heat of zeal working upon the dregs of ignorance, as othe...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Dated August 6, 1707; 1711

"The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: March 16, 1696/7; 1708

"I fansy I pretty well guess what it is that some Men find mischievous in your 'Essay': 'Tis opening the Eyes of the Ignorant, and rectifying the Methods of Reasoning, which perhaps may undermine some received Errors, and so abridge the Empire of Darkness; wherein, though the Subject wander deplo...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: (March 2, 1692/3); 1708

"I have but one Child in the World, who is now nigh four Years old, and promises well; his Mother left him to me very young, and my Affections (I must confess) are strongly placed on him. It has pleased God, by the liberal Provisions of our Ancestors, to free me from the toiling Cares of providin...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: June 2, 1694; 1708

"He is now five Years old, of a most towardly and promising Disposition bred exactly, as far as his Age permits, to the Rules you prescribe, I mean as to forming his Mind, and mastering his Passions."

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: December 20, 1692; 1708

"I'm much concerned to hear you have your Health no better and, on this Occasion, cannot but deplore the great Losses the intellectual World, in all Ages, has suffer'd by, the strongest and soundest Minds possessing the most infirm and sickly Bodies. Certainly there must be some very powerful Cau...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: December 20, 1692; 1708

"As for his General Theory of them, I esteem it, as all others of this kind, a sort of mere waking Dream, that Men are strangely apt to fall into, when they think long of a Subject, beginning quite at the wrong End; for by framing such Conceits in their Fancies, they vainly think to give their Un...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)