Date: 380-360 B.C.

"[T]here is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 370-300 B.C.

"So too when you state the next point in your argument, that those who train their bodies but neglect their souls are guilty of another action of the same sort--neglecting the part that should rule, and attending to that which should be ruled."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the Plain of Truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"During this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence,--which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth,--bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labour, and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man b...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: w. 350 B.C.

"It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things."

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Date: w. 350 B.C.

"The process [of thinking] is like that in which the air modifies the pupil in this or that way and the pupil transmits the modification to some third thing (and similarly in hearing), while the ultimate point of arrival is one, a single mean, with different manners of being."

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Date: 350 B.C.

"Suppose that the eye were an animal--sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name"

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Date: c. 43 AD

"Those things that men's untutored hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies--jewels, gold, silver, and polished tables, huge and round--all these are earthly dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature, can have no love, since it is itself light and uncumbered, wa...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

Date: c. 65 A.D.

"He is the true freeman who has escaped from bondage to self. That slavery is constant, from it there is no deliverance."

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)