Date: 1716

"Their Conscience is a Worm within, / That gnaws them Night and Day."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

Date: 1742

"[A]nd when they perceive him so different from what he hath been described, all Gentleness, Softness, Kindness, Tenderness, Fondness, their dreadful Apprehensions vanish in a moment; and now (it being usual with the human Mind to skip from one Extreme to its Opposite, as easily, and almost as su...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1767

"Man in this world, Sir, may be compared to a hackney-coach upon a stand; continually subject to be drawn by his unruly appetites, on one foolish jaunt or another; but you will say, if his appetites are horses, which as it were drag him along, reason is the coachman to rule those horses--But, Sir...

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

Date: 1798

"She had also suffered a disappointment, which preyed upon her mind."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1798

"Feeling herself unable to accept this as an explanation, she instantly determined to sail for London by the very first opportunity, that she might thus bring to a termination the suspence that preyed upon her soul."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1815

"With my own hand I'll ope the way / From its base tenement of clay; / Tir'd of its suff'rings here below, / I'll loose it from this scene of woe; / I'll prune its wings and let it fly, / To seek again its native sky."

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1821

"Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, / From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1821

"And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, / Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1821

One may have "A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1821

"Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief / Convulse us and consume us day by day, / And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)