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: 1692

"The Anatomy therefore of Man (concluded I) both as to Mind, and Body is a filthy Curiosity, as he observes, where one must besmeer ones self with Blood to trace the intricate Menaders of each Nerve, and Motion, and all the private Kingdom of Veins, and Arteries; by which the Mind as well as Body...

— Gildon, Charles (1665-1724)

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)