Date: 380-360 B.C.

"But while we may admit that each soul wears out a number of bodies, especially if it lives a great many of years--because although the body is continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul never stops replacing what it worn away--still we must suppose that when the soul dies...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"'Having' [knowledge] seems to me different from 'possessing.' If a man has bought a coat and owns it, but is not wearing it, we should say he possesses it without having it about him."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 400 AD

"How can the soul be one with what it wears [i.e., the body]? For a shirt is not one with the person wearing it."

— Nemesius of Emesa (fl. c. 390)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely un...

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: 1593

"[A]s wee apparaile our selves in Beastes skinnes, in self same sort we clothe our soules in theyr sinnes"

— Nashe, Thomas (bap. 1567, d. c. 1601)

Date: 1598

"Sorrow so royally in you appears / That I will deeply put the fashion on, / And wear it in my heart."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"Such harmony is in immortal souls, /But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1648

"Thus a man who is dressed can be regarded as a compound of a man and clothes. But with respect to the man, his being dressed is merely a mode, although clothes are substances. In the same way, in the case of a man, who is composed of a soul and a body, our author might be regarding the body as t...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1650

"His gay robe's lined with a restlesse mind"

— Baron, Robert (1630-1658)

Date: 1659

"Not that the Plastick virtue, awakened by the Imperium of her Will, shall renew all the lineaments it did in this Earthly Body (for abundance of them are useless and to no purpose, which therefore, Providence so ordaining, will be silent in this aiery figuration, and onely such operate as are fi...

— More, Henry (1614-1687)