Date: Mid 5th Century

"The soul therefore was never a writing-tablet bare of inscriptions; she is a tablet that has always been inscribed and is always writing itself and being written on by Nous."

— Proclus (c. 411-85)

Date: Written not before 512

"So I continued to ponder all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what I had heard, but rather chewing the cud of constant meditation."

— Boethius (480-524/5)

Date: Written not before 512

"At last the door opened to my mind's knocking, and the truth which I found in my inquiry disclosed all the fogs of Eutychian error."

— Boethius (480-524/5)

Date: 537, 1533

"celas etiam ut ita dixerim, speculum mentis [mirror of mind] tuae, ubi te omnis aetas ventura possit inspicere."

— Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus(c. 484/490 - c. 585)

Date: 731

"Ond he eal þa he in gehærnesse geleornian meahte mid hine gemyndgade, ond swa swa clæne neten eodorcende in þæt sweteste leoð gehwerfde." And he was able to learn all that he heard; and remembering within him, just as a clean animal chewing cud [ruminating], he turned it into the swe...

— Bede (672/3 - 735)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"[The Active Intellect's] relation to our souls is that of the Sun to our vision."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"So, initially coming to know something is like treating the eye, but then when the eye is healthy, whenever it wants it looks at something from which a given form is taken, while when it turns from that thing, that [thing] comes to be in potency proximate to act."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"These bodily members are, as it were, no more than garments; which, because they have been attached to us for a long time, we think are us, or parts of us [and] the cause of this is the long period of adherence: we are accustomed to remove clothes and to throw them down, which we are entirely un...

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: 1077

"Most appropriately, therefore, the mind can be said to be its own mirror, in which it contemplates, so to speak, the image of its highest essence which it cannot see face to face."

— St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Date: 1077

"Enter into the chamber of your mind; exclude everything but God and what helps you search for him, and then search for him, with the door closed."

— St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)