Date: 1612

"Solid and sober natures, have more of the ballast, then of the saile"

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

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

"[A]s an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of objects through the sense, cannot be trusted to report them truly"

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

Date: 1620

"For when we try to recollect or call a thing to mind, if we have no prenotion or perception of what we are seeking, we seek and toil and wander here and there, as if in infinite space."

— 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 the studies of men in these places are confined and as it were imprisoned in the writings of certain authors, from whom if any man dissent he is straightway arraigned as a turbulent person and an innovator."

— 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: 1620

"For whereas in this first book of aphorisms I proposed to prepare men's minds as well for understanding as for receiving what is to follow; now that I have purged and swept and levelled the floor of the mind, it remains that I place the mind in a good position and as it were in a favourable aspe...

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

Date: 1620

"And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it."

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

Date: 1665

Minds are "like smooth paper never writ upon, / When folded up, by some impression / Marks will remain it never had before, / And ne're return to former smoothness more."

— Howard, Sir Robert (1626-1698)