Date: 1611

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

— Anonymous

Date: 1641

"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1656

"It is impossible, Lady, except you should alter the Fabrick of his mind, unbend its appetite, or give it new desires; for as long as the divine soul creating breath, is clad with different disposing matter, and cast in several moulds, there will be Wise and Fooles."

— Anonymous

Date: 1657

Fancy is "The roving, pregnant, busie, teeming sence."

— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)

Date: 1664

"The fancy, memory, and judgment are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1682

"Our Passions are nothing else but certain Disallowable Motions of the Mind; Sudden, and Eager; which, by Frequency, and Neglect, turn to a Disease; as a Distillation brings us first to a Cough, and then to a Phthisick."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1688

"Here's Cavities, says one; and here, says he, / Is th' Seat of Fancy, Judgment, Memory: / Here, says another, is the fertile Womb, / From whence the Spirits Animal do come, / Which are mysteriously ingender'd here, / Of Spirits from Arterious Blood and Air: / Here, said a third, Life made her fi...

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: 1691

"Trade is the very Life and Soul of the Universe, which, like the Vital Blood in the Body, Circulates to the Health, and well-being of the whole, and when by the failure of Industry, there is a stop put to Commerce, it often proves as fatal to the Body Politick, as the stagnating of the Blood doe...

— Blount, Thomas Pope, Sir (1649-1697)

Date: 1691

"Can it be a Fault to chuse a better for a worse, and don't all the thinking World agree that this state we are now in, is but a Slavery to sence, a bondage to dull matter, which tedders us down like our Brother Brutes, where we are not only exposed to want and misery, but to all the Insults and ...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"And shou'd an Evangelist, with an Angel at his Elbow, have told me that Goddess of my Soul had so much as one speck of Deformity, one single Mole, either in Body or Mind, I shou'd have said--By your leave, Mr. Evangelist,--I must suspend my Faith."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)