Date: 380-360 B.C.

"The result of agreeing with the body and finding pleasure in the same things is, I imagine, that [the soul] cannot help becoming like it in character and training, so that it can never get entirely away to the unseen world, but it is always saturated with the body when it sets out, and so soon f...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to defend themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in ...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

He "who thinks that even the best of writings are but a memorandum for those who know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfe...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

The soul is to the body as a scent is to the flower.

— Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)

Date: 58

"As in a tilled-field, when ploughed for corn, some flowers are found amongst it, and yet, though these posies may charm the eye, all this labour was not spent in order to produce them--the man who sowed the field had another object in view he gained this over and above it--so pleasure is not [th...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

Date: 101

"Because the gods have given the vine, or wheat, we sacrifice to them: but because they have produced in the human mind that fruit by which they designed to show us the truth which relates to happiness, shall we not thank God for this?"

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

Date: 101

"Is, then, the fruit of a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily?"

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

Date: 1581

"And for that the minde in infantes is like a payre of tables, wherein nothing is written, and like & tender twig which may be bowed euery way, it is cleare, that vertue or vice may easily be planted in it."

— Guazzo, Stefano (1530-1593); Pettie, George, trans. (1548-1589)

Date: 1605, 1640

"But yet, nevertheless, secundum majus et minus, a man may revisit and descend unto the foundations of his knowledge and consent; and so transplant it into another, as it grew in his own mind."

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

Date: 1605, 1640

"For it is in knowledges as it is in plants: if you mean to use the plant, it is no matter for the roots--but if you mean to remove it to grow, then it is more assured to rest upon roots than slips: so the delivery of knowledges (as it is now used) is as of fair bodies of trees without the roots;...

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