Date: 54 B.C.

"O what greater blessing than cares released, when the mind casts down its burden, and when wearied with the toil of travel we reach our hearth, and rest in the long-for bed."

— Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 - c. 54 B.C.)

Date: 1386-1400

"That oon of hem was blynd and myghte not see, / But it were with thilke eyen of his mynde / With whiche men seen, after that they ben blynde."

— Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340-1400)

Date: c. 1420

"Thou woost wel, who shal an hous edifie / Gooth nat ther-to withoute avisament / If he be wys, for with his mental ye / First is it seen, purposid, cast & ment, / How it shal wroght been, elles al is shent."

— Hoccleve [Occleve], Thomas (c.1367-1426)

Date: 1596

"So full their eyes are of that glorious sight, / And senses fraught with such satiety, / That in nought else on earth they can delight, / But in th' aspect of that felicity, /Which they have written in their inward eye"

— Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)

Date: 1599

The "Soule hath power to know all things, / Yet is she blind and ignorant in all"

— Davies, Sir John (bap. 1569, d. 1626)

Date: 1609

"Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind, / And that which governs me to go about, / Doth part his function, and is partly blind"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1609

"Save that my soul's imaginary sight / Presents thy shadow to my sightless view"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1609

"Looke what thy memorie cannot containe, / Commit to these waste blacks, and thou shalt finde / Those children nurst, deliuerd from thy braine, / To take a new acquaintance of thy minde."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1610

Man "into himself can draw / All, all his faith can swallow, or reason chaw ... All the round world, to man is but a pill."

— Donne, John (1572-1631)

Date: 1657

"His Soul grown Pregnant, big (as 'twere) did prove / With loyall thoughts of equity and love"

— Harington, John (1627-1700)