Date: 1718

"You from your Breast must root Religion's Weed, / Not only sin, but disbelieve your Creed."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"May not this cheering Breath, this soothing Air, / Nourish too fast Vain-Glory's secret Root, / And make its rank pernicious Branches shoot, / Till on your Mind they baneful Blossoms spread, / And drop malignant Dews on Virtue's tender Head?"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"And now the fair Ideas, which possest / Your Mind, by loose and vicious Thoughts opprest, / How will you wing your Way to Realms above, / And feast your Soul with Extasies of Love"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: 1718

"Alma, They strenuously maintain, / Sits Cock-horse on Her Throne, the Brain; / And from that Seat of Thought dispenses / Her Sov'reign Pleasure to the Senses."

— Prior, Matthew (1664-1721)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"And not our Houses alone, when (as SOPHOCLES has it) they stand long untenanted, run the faster to ruine, but Mens natural parts lying unemployed for lack of Acquaintance with the World, contract a kind of filth or rust and craziness thereby."

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to Idleness, spoils and debilitates, not only the Body but the Soul too: And as close Waters shadowed over by bordering Trees, and stagnated in default of Springs, so supply current and motion to them become foul and corrupt; so methinks...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"Have you not then observed how a Man's Reason (like fire, scarce visible and just going out) retires into it self, and what with inactivity and dullness, every little flitting object so flatters and endangers the extinguishing it, that there remains but some obscure indications that the Man is a...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"I am indeed of Opinion, that the Ancients called Man 'Phos', that is 'Light', so that from the Affinity of their Natures, strong desires are bred in Mankind, of continually seeing and being seen to each other: Nay some Philosophers hold the Soul it self to be essentially LIGHT, which among other...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: w. 1719, 1951

"By fortitude of mind he conquest gains / O're sordid pleasures and imagind pains."

— Ramsay, Allan (1684-1758)

Date: 1719

"I expected every Wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the Ship fell down, as I thought, in the Trough or Hollow of the Sea, we should never rise more; and in this Agony of Mind, I made many Vows and Resolutions, that if it would please God here to spare my Life this one Voyage, i...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)