Date: 1464

"Therefore, my dearly beloved Peter, with keen directedness turn your mind's eye to this secret, and with this analysis enter into my writings and into whatever other writings you read, and occupy yourself especially with my books and sermons."

— Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464)

Date: 1474

The soul is like a mirror in which the divine image can be seen

— Marsiglio Ficino [Marsilius] (1433-1499)

Date: 1474

The human mind is a spark...

— Marsiglio Ficino [Marsilius] (1433-1499)

Date: c. 1508?

"The mind of the painter should be like a mirror which always takes the colour of the thing that it reflects and which is filled by as many images as there are things placed before it."

— Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519)

Date: 1530

"Paucis libris vir sapiens contentus est, et quanto sapientior, tanto pauciorum codicum est indigus. Egregie autem eruditus in scrinio pectoris libriariam circunfert."

— Mair [Major], John (1467-1550)

Date: 1532

[The theater of the mind is] "marked with many images, and full of little boxes"

— Camillo, Giulio (1480-1544)

Date: 1536

"For just as when through the mind and understanding men grasp a knowledge of things, and from this are said 'to know,' this is the source of the word 'knowledge,' so also when they have a sense of divine judgment, as a witness joined to them, which does not allow them to hide their sins from bei...

— Calvin, John (1509-1564)

Date: 1536

"If the Gentiles by nature have law righteousness engraved upon their minds, we surely cannot say they are utterly blind as to the conduct of life. There is nothing more common than for a man to be sufficiently instructed in a right standard of conduct by natural law (of which the apostle is here...

— Calvin, John (1509-1564)

Date: 1536

"that inward law, which we have ... described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables."

— Calvin, John (1509-1564)

Date: 1704

"Erect your schemes with as much method and skill as you please; yet, if the materials be nothing but dirt, spun out of your own entrails (the guts of modern brains), the edifice will conclude at last in a cobweb; the duration of which, like that of other spiders’ webs, may be imputed to their be...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)