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: 1594

"For a spur of diligence therefore we have a natural thirst after knowledge ingrafted in us. But by reason of that original weakness in the instruments, without which the understanding part is not able in this world by discourse to work, the very conceit of painfulness is as a bridle to stay us."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1596

"For as the sicke man, vvhen he seemes to sleepe and take his rest, is invvardly full of troubles: so the benummed and drousie conscience wants not his secret pangs and terrours; and when it shal be roused by the iudgement of God, it waxeth cruell and fierce like a wild beast."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1596

"Lastly, such persons after the last iudgement, shall haue not onely their bodies in torment, but the vvorme in the soule and conscience shall neuer die."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1596

"[A]nd so Gods care to man is manifest in this, that when he created man and placed him in the worlde, he gaue him conscience to be his keeper to follow him alwaies at the heeles & to dogge him (as we say) & to pry into his actions & to beare witnesse of them all."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: c. 1603

"The fact is, my son, that the human mind in studying nature becomes big under the impact of things and brings forth a teeming brood of errors."

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