Date: 1594, 1623

"O, beat away the busy meddling fiend / That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"I think if my breast had not been made of faith, and my heart of steel, she had transformed me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i' th' wheel."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"What observation mad'st thou in this case / Of his heart's meteors tilting in his face?"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1594, 1623

"A devil in an everlasting garment hath him, / One whose hard heart is buttoned up with steel."

— 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: 1594

"The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is and yet all things may be imprinted; we are to search by what steps and degrees it riseth unto perfection of knowledge."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"Till we grow to some ripeness of years, the soul of man doth only store itself with conceits of things of inferior and more open quality, which afterwards do serve as instruments unto that which is greater; in the meanwhile above the reach of meaner creatures it ascendeth not."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"Finally, Appetite is the Will’s solicitor, and the Will is Appetite’s controller."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

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)