Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Let us but consider a little the Receptacles of Images, the Regions of Imagination, the curious formation in all the Instruments of Sense; to which we may add the activity and subtlety of the Spirits, the delicate Contexture of the Nerves, the various Articulations of the Voice, the Harmony of F...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Learning ought to be infus'd into the Scholar like spirits into a Bottle, by little and little, for whosoever attempts to pour in all at once, may in all likelihood spill a great part, and in a great measure fill the Vessel with Wind and Air."

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"For certain 'tis that Memory in Youth is infinitely more ready than in men of riper years, as appears from their different capacitys in learning of a Language; and then for Invention which always builds out of the Store-house of Memory, 'tis then most perfect and various when the Spirits are mos...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: Read 1680-1681, published 1705

"Memory then conceive to be nothing else but a Repository of Ideas formed partly by the Senses, but chiefly by the Soul it self: I say, partly by the Senses, because they are as it were the Collectors or Carriers of the Impressions made by Objects from without, delivering them to the Repository o...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1733

"But what they demand is, any ideas of them as different from all the ideas and conceptions of things sensible and human, as these are from things imperceptible and divine: and accordingly they tell you that when they look inward for such ideas to annex to the terms, their mind is an empty void; ...

— Browne, Peter (d. 1735)

Date: 1734

"Search well, my soul, thro' all the dark recesses / Of nature and self-love, the plies, the folds, / And hollow winding caverns of the heart, / Where flattery hides our sins."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1747

"The figures, which must actuate her, remain / As yet quite uncollected in the brain; / Exterior objects have not furnish' yet / Th' ideal stores which Age is sure to get."

— Cardinal Melchior de Polignac (1661-1741)

Date: 1831

Anaxarchus when "ordered by Nicocreon, tyrant of Salamis, to be pounded in a mortar [...] in contempt of his mortal sufferings, exclaimed, 'Beat on, tyrant! thou dost but strike upon the case of Anaxarchus; thou canst not touch the man himself'"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1831

"The mind is so infinitely superior in character to this case of flesh that incloses it, that he cannot persuade himself that it and the body perish together"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1831

"They skim away from one flower in the parterre of literature to another, like the bee, without, like the bee, gathering sweetness from each, to increase the public stock, and enrich the magazine of thought."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)