Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"But when a cylindrical mirrour, placed right, hath reduced those irregular lines on the table into their due order and proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the eye presently sees that it is a man, or Caesar, i.e. that it belongs to those names; and that it is sufficiently distinguishable f...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them"
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1692
"[T]he Explanation whereof is allowed by all men as satisfactory, 'tis this, in Tab. 41. Fig. 2. the Image a b of the Object A B is painted on the Retina inverted, and yet the Eye (or rather the Soul by means of the Eye) sees the Object erect and in its natural Posture."
preview | full record— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)
Date: Friday, October 26, 1711
"A Man, they say, wears the Picture of his Mind in his Countenance; and one Man's Eyes are Spectacles to his who looks at him to read his Heart."
preview | full record— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)
Date: January 1739
"On the other hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union, and, like colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression which arises from the whole."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1749
"I always use the word imagine, because I am of the opinion that everything is imagined, and that all the parts of the soul may be justly reduced to the imagination only, which forms them all; and thus the judgment, reason, and memory are not absolute faculties of the soul, but real modifications...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1748, 1749
"The sun, the air, the water, the organization and form of bodies, are all rang'd in order in the eye, as in a looking-glass, which represents to the imagination the pictures of all the objects painted there, according to the laws of vision, which prevail amongst that numberless variety of partic...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: 1817
"In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it."
preview | full record— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
Date: August, 22, 2015
"Partial images slide through my mind, a scattering of words spoken. Neurobiologists say that memory isn’t the replay of a video camera, but instead a pastiche of neuronal fragments gathered from here and there, wandering smells, oddly cut visual scraps, translucent experiences laid on top of one...
preview | full record— Lightman, Alan (b. 1948)