Date: 1500?

"Take hede of thy horse, whyche ys thy body, that he be made buxome and mylde unto the soule whyche ys hys master."

— Anonymous

Date: 1741

"But in the middle Stage of Life, or it may be from fifteen to fifty Years of Age, the Memory is generally in its happiest State, the Brain easily receives and long retains the Images and Traces which are impress'd upon on it, and the natural Spirits are more active to range these little infinite...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"He supposed that a philosopher's brain was like a great forest, where ideas ranged like animals of several kinds; that those ideas copulated and engendered conclusions; that when those different species copulate, they bring forth monsters and absurdities; that the major is the male, the minor th...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: 1748

"And he labours hard to prove that these Ideas are not innate, but would have our Souls like a Blank Paper, a Rasa Tabula, ready to receive Ideas, but void of all; And affirms that these Ideas are the Foundation of all our Knowledge; and that they are conveyed to the Mind by external Objects."

— Anonymous [A Gentleman Late of the Temple, George Osborn]

Date: 1748, 1754

"Nature has therefore endued us with a MIDDLE FACULTY, wonderfully adapted to our MIXED State, which holds partly of Sense and partly of Reason, being strongly allied to the former, and the common Receptacle in which all the Notices that come from that quarter are treasured up, and yet greatly su...

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: Tuesday, March 12, 1751

"There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1760-7

"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1774

"Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint, / While the owner ne'er knew half the good that was in't."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"The pupil of impulse, it [his heart] forced him along, / His conduct still right, with his argument wrong; / Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam, / The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1778

"So steht unser Körper zwischen Seele und der übrigen Welt in der Mitte, Spiegel der Wirkungen von beiden. [Thus our body stands between soul and ambient world, in the middle, mirror of the effect of both.]"

— Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742-1799)