Date: 1614

"That there is a God; ... This is a common notion, and impression, sealed up in the minde of every man."

— Purchas, Samuel (bap. 1577, d. 1626)

Date: 1620

The ideas of the divine "are the creator's own stamp upon creation, impressed and defined in matter by true and exquisite lines"

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1620

"Lastly, knowing how much the sight of man's mind is distracted by experience and history, and how hard it is at the first (especially for minds either tender or preoccupied) to become familiar with nature, I not unfrequently subjoin observations of my own, being as the first offers, inclinations...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1620

"For every one (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature; owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authorit...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1640

"The minds of men are after such strange waies besieged, that for to admit the true beams of things, a sincere and polisht Area is wanting"

— Watts, Gilbert (d. 1657)

Date: 1651

"And therefore of absurd and false affirmations, in case they be universal, there can be no understanding, though many think they understand them, when they do but repeat the words softly, or con them in their mind."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651

"This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself), we call imagination, as I said before; but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old, and past, it is called memory."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651

"When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinders it) eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it"

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651

"Again, from thence, his thoughts run over the same places and times, to find what action, or other occasion might make him lose it."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651

"By the apprehensive power we perceive the species of sensible things present, or absent, and retain them as wax doth the print of a seal."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)