Date: 1691

"Twice every day a thousand Fancies and Fegaries crowd into my Noddle so thick as if my Brain kept open-house for all the Maggots in nature."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"So that, Reader, you see my Soul is a proper Tenant for the House it lives in; both which were naturally ill Match'd, to shew, that a generous Spirit may be lodg'd under any shape."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"Within the inner Closet of my Brain / Attend the nobler Members of my Train; / Invention, Master of my Mint, grows there, / And Memory, my faithful Treasurer."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"This is my MANNOR-HOUSE; Then Lad you see, / I live Great-Master of a Family."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1759

"He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful go...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1770-1

"The method that Mrs. Ruby-nose used to dismiss her anger, was to clap herself into an arm-chair with such a whang, that it shook the hot vapours from her brain, and sent them in a hurry down into a capacious store-room called her victualling-office."

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1770-1

"By this time the choleric vapours, which madam had jogged downwards when she let her broad bottom salute the chair with such a whack, growing warm amongst the hodg-potch they found in her store-room, which we may properly stile a hot-house, began to ascend, and take possession of their former te...

— Bridges, Thomas (b. 1710?, d. in or after 1775)

Date: 1854

"Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as its...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

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)