Date: 1543

Reason is like a beam of light.

— Vives, Juan Luis (1492-1540)

Date: 1543

Reason is like a stream deriving from the source of God.

— Vives, Juan Luis (1492-1540)

Date: 1580

The Pyrrhonist's mind "is a white sheet prepared to take from the finger of God what form soever it shall please him to imprint therein."

— Montaigne, Michel Eyquem seigneur de (1533-1592)

Date: 1588

"Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest and keeps incessantly whirling arounnd building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it."

— Montaigne, Michel Eyquem seigneur de (1533-1592)

Date: 1604

"How are the Soule and Body, Spirite and Flesh coupled together, what chaynes, what fetters imprison a spirituall Substance, an immortal Spirit in so base, stinking; and corruptible a carkasse?"

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1604

"For, as the Ratte running behinde a paynted cloth, betrayeth her selfe; even so, a Passion lurking in the heart, by thoughts and speech discovereth it selfe, according to the common Proverbe, ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, from the aboundance of heart, the tongue speaketh: for as a Riv...

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1606

To properly prepare a soul for God, one must "qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it."

— Charron, Pierre (1541-1603)

Date: 1641

A geometrical argument fills the mind and allows one to see everything at a single glance

— Mersenne, Marin (1588-1648)

Date: 1641

A calm mind, free from the hurly-burly of external things, may fix its gaze on itself

— Arnauld, Antoine (1612-1694)

Date: 1641

"But if the entire soul is something of this kind, why should you, who may be thought of as the noblest part of the soul, not be regarded as being, so to speak, the flower, or the most refined and pure and active part of it?"

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)