Date: 1603

"Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel, / Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"And let me wring your heart; for so I shall / If it be made of penetrable stuff, / If damnèd custom have not brassed it so / That it is proof and bulwark against sense."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"And my imaginations are as foul / As Vulcan's stithy."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1604, 1622

A thought may, "like a poisonous mineral," gnaw one's inwards

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1632

"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1633

"Our two soules therefore, which are one, / Though I must goe, endure not yet / A breach, but an expansion, / Like gold to ayery thinnesse beate."

— Donne, John (1572-1631)

Date: 1641

"As Lots wife was turned into a Pillar of Salt, that her inconstancie might be fixt, and yet be melting still: So, thou, my Soule, if I had my wish, shouldst be turned into a Pillar of Thoughts; that thy volubility might be restrain'd, and yet be thinking still."

— Baker, Richard, Sir (c. 1568-1645)

Date: 1647

"False Coin with which th'Impostor cheats us still; / The Stamp and Colour good, but Metal ill!"

— Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667)

Date: 1651

"And as the Grindstone to unpolish'd Steel / Gives Edge, and Lustre: so my Mind, I feel / VVhetted, and glaz'd by Fortunes turning VVheel"

— Sherburne, Sir Edward (bap. 1616, d. 1702)

Date: 1651

"Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)