Date: 1651, 1668
"And on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1651
"'Tis but the Body that blind Fortunes spight / Can chain to Earth; the nobler Soul doth slight / Her servill Bonds, and takes to Heaven her flight."
preview | full record— Sherburne, Sir Edward (bap. 1616, d. 1702)
Date: 1657
Fancy is "The roving, pregnant, busie, teeming sence."
preview | full record— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)
Date: 1657
The fancy is a "Boundlesse, restlesse faculty, free from all engagements, diggs without spade, sails without Ships, Flies without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed, in a moment striding from the Center to the circumference of the world, by a kind of omnipotency creating and ...
preview | full record— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)