Date: 1603

A people may be "muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers / For good Polonius' death."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1609

"My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;/ And I myself see not the bottom of it."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1651

"And as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after, so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then when he sees, dreams, &c"

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651

Imagination is a "decaying sense:" "And as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after, so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then when he sees, dreams, &c"

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1667

"Yet all those billows in your breast did meet / A heart so firm, so loyal, and so sweet, / That over them you greater conquest made / Than your Immortal Father ever had."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1676

"Nature has her cheats, stums a brain, and puts sophisticate dullness often on the tasteless multitude for true wit and good humour"

— Etherege, Sir George (1636-1691/2)

Date: 1691

"And strangely doth the Vast Abyss contain / Within the Vaster Ocean of his Brain."

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Thus with ten wounds / The river dragon tamed at length submits / To let his sojourners depart, and oft / Humbles his stubborn heart; but still, as ice / More hardened after thaw."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise / Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise / At least distempered, discontented thoughts, / Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, / Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1660, 1676

"In these men the principles are holy, the instruction perfect, the law remaining, the perswasions uncancelled; but against all this torrent there is a whirlwind of passions, and filthy resolutions, and wilfulness, which corrupt the heart, while as yet the head is uncorrupted in the direct rules ...

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)