Date: c. 1508?

"The mind of the painter should be like a mirror which always takes the colour of the thing that it reflects and which is filled by as many images as there are things placed before it."

— Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519)

Date: 1589

"And this phantasie may be resembled to a glasse as hath bene sayd, whereof there be many tempers and manner of makinges, as the perspectiues doe acknowledge, for some be false glasses and shew thinges otherwise than they be in deede, and others right as they be in deede, neither fairer nor foule...

— Puttenham, George (1529-1590/91)

Date: 1592

"Thine eye the glasse where I behold my hart, / mine eye the window, through the which thine eye / may see my hart, and there thy selfe espye / in bloudie colours how thou painted art."

— Constable, Henry (1562-1613)

Date: 1597

"Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes / I see thy grieved heart."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: c. 1603

"But do you suppose, when all the approaches and entrances to men's minds are beset and blocked by the most obscure idols -- idols deeply implanted and, as it were, burned in -- that any clean and polished surface remains in the mirror of the mind on which the genuine natural light of things can ...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605, 1640

"By which wordes he declares, not obscurely, that God hath framed the Mind of Man, as a Mirror or Glasse capable of the Image of the universall world, and as joyfull to receive the impressions thereof, as the eye joyeth to receave light; and not only delighted in the beholding, the variety of thi...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605, 1640

"For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1605?

"Within thine eyes (the Mirrors of my minde) / Mine eies behold themselues, wherein they see / (As through a Glasse) what in my Soule I find; / And so my Soules right shape I see in thee."

— Davies, John (1564/5-1618)

Date: 1615

"The eyes are the discouerers of the mind, as the countenance is the Image of the same; by the eyes as by a window, you may looke euen into the secret corners of the Soule: so that it was well sayde of Alexander ... that the eyes are the mirror or Looking-glasse of the Soule."

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1620

"[A]s an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of objects through the sense, cannot be trusted to report them truly"

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)