Date: 1718

"For from most Bodies, Dick, You know,/ Some little Bits ask Leave to flow; / And, as thro' these Canals They roll, / Bring up a Sample of the Whole. / Like Footmen running before Coaches, / To tell the Inn, what Lord approaches."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"The Brain contains ten thousand Cells: / In each some active Fancy dwells; / Which always is at Work, and framing / The several Follies I was naming."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718

"Whilst, as my System says, the Mind / Is to these upper Rooms confin'd."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

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...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1992

"Whenever she thought of what she was meant to say, it seemed to dash around the corner, and lose itself in the crowd of things she should not say. The most successful fugitives were often the dullest, the sentences that nobody notices until they are not spoken: 'How nice to see you...won't you s...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)