Date: 1684

"For certainly there must be some change in our mind when we have some thoughts and then others, and, in fact, ideas of things we are not actually thinking about are in our minds as the shape of Hercules is in rough marble."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"'Tis so many times in the capacities of Youth: they who can receive any impression like the Virgin-wax, will as easily suffer a defacement unless it be hardned and matur'd by Time: whereas others who are hard to be wrought upon like Steel, retain the Images which are Engraven on them with much m...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1687

"Yet sure we think 'em sensless stories, / The pageantry of some distempered Head, / Which fancies Pencil did delineate, / The broken visions of the living when they dream'd 'oth' dead."

— Rawlet, John (bap. 1642, d. 1686)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Whence comes that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And in this Sense it is, that our Ideas are said to be in our Memories, when indeed, they are actually no where, but only there is an ability in the Mind, when it will, to revive them again; and as it were paint them anew on it self, though some with more, some with less difficulty, some more li...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by time, and the Imagery moulders away."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How much the Constitution of our Bodies, and the make of our animal Spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the Temper of the Brain make this difference, that in some it retains the Characters drawn on it like Marble, in others like Free-stone, and in others little better than Sand, I shall ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"But when a cylindrical mirrour, placed right, hath reduced those irregular lines on the table into their due order and proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the eye presently sees that it is a man, or Caesar, i.e. that it belongs to those names; and that it is sufficiently distinguishable f...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)