Date: 1635
"Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, / But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue."
preview | full record— Donne, John (1572-1631)
Date: 1637
"Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the ...
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1640
"The minds of men are after such strange waies besieged, that for to admit the true beams of things, a sincere and polisht Area is wanting"
preview | full record— Watts, Gilbert (d. 1657)
Date: 1641
"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1641
The mind is a craftsman, the body his tool
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1641
"If you do not accept this, then you must untie the knot which in your view must be binding us with adamantine bonds and preventing our mind from soaring above every kind of body."
preview | full record— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)
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."
preview | full record— Baker, Richard, Sir (c. 1568-1645)
Date: 1642
"The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in: I feel sometimes a Hell within my self; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast, Legion is revived in me."
preview | full record— Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
Date: 1644, 1647
"It must be realized that the human soul, while informing the entire body, nevertheless has its principal seat in the brain."
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1647
"False Coin with which th'Impostor cheats us still; / The Stamp and Colour good, but Metal ill!"
preview | full record— Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667)