Date: w. c. 64 [perhaps much later], 1611

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

— Simon Peter or Saint Peter (d. c. 64)

Date: w. c. 54-8, trans. 1611

"But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

Date: 1687, 1691

"Consider, Dear Oglou, what past then in my Heart, and what a War I was to sustain."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1663-1689

"Our hearts weak forts we must resign / When beauty does its forces join / With man's strong enemy, good wine."

— Sackville, Charles, sixth earl of Dorset and first earl of Middlesex (1643-1706)

Date: 1698

"Your Bulwarks, Entrenchments and Redoubts lay so cunningly hid in your Way of Ideas, that they were altogether Invisible; so that the most quick-sighted Engineer living could not discern them, or take any sure Aim at them: Much less such a Dull Eye as mine; who, tho' I bend my Sight as strongly ...

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

Date: 1704

"All endeavours must be therefore used, either to divert, bind up, stupify, fluster, and amuse the senses, or else, to justle them out of their stations; and while they are either absent, or otherwise employed, or engaged in a civil war against each other, the spirit enters and performs ...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1723

"Neither cou'd our Spy, considering his Education in the Mahometan Religion, take a properer Method, in my Opinion, to disengage himself from the Legends of the Nursery, and Fables of the Schools, (as a great man calls our Infant Idea's of things) than to follow the Counsel of his beloved des Car...

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

Date: 1751

"The eye, my dear, the wicked eye--has such a strict alliance with the heart--And both have such enmity to the judgment!"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1751

Clarissa, if any "woman ever could, would have given a glorious instance of a passion conquered, or at least kept under, by Reason, and by Piety"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1751

"If a passion can be conquered, it is a sacrifice a good child owes to indulgent parents"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)