Date: 1594, 1623

"My mind hath been as big as one of yours, / My heart as great, my reason haply more."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind, / And makes it fearful and degenerate."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"A heart unspotted is not easily daunted. "

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"Ay, Margaret, my heart is drowned with grief, / Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"I took a costly jewel from my neck -- / A heart it was, bound in with diamonds -- / And threw it towards thy land. The sea received it, / And so I wished thy body might my heart."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"Here could I breathe my soul into the air [...] So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul / Or I should breathe it, so, into thy body"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"O thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts, / My thoughts that labour to persuade my soul / Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1595 [c. 1579 in ms.]

"Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature brings forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, c...

— Sidney, Philip, Sir (1554-1586)

Date: 1596

"But vnles they take better heed, and preuent the danger by repentance, Hanged-conscience vvill revive and become both gibbet and hangman to them either in this life or the life to come."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1596

"Nay it is (as it were) a little god sitting in the middle of mens hearts arraigning them in this life as they shall be arraigned for their offences at the tribunall seate of the euerliuing god in the day of iudgement."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)