Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"We can best learn how mental intuition is to be employed by comparing it with ordinary vision."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Moreover, as we said, we should not contemplate, in one and the same visual or mental gaze, more than two of the innumerable different dimensions which it is possible to depict in the imagination."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1686

"Our souls are all disrob'd, all naked laid, / In thy true Mirror men themselves do see"

— Flatman, Thomas (1635-1688)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Having spoken in the foregoing Chapter of the Improvements of the Mind by Erudition, it follows of Course that we speak of the Improvement of the Body by Exercise. Indeed a Vigorous and Athletick Habit of Body, doth extreamly advance the like Disposition and Ability in the Mind; Since all Intell...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1687

Man's mind like his "outward form" charmed the eyes of the "wondering herd"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1687, 1691

"I embrace thee, and cordially kiss thee, with the Lips of my Soul, if a man may so express himself."

— Marana, Giovanni Paolo (1642-1693); Anonymous [William Bradshaw (fl. 1700) or Robert Midgley (1655?-1723)?]

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: 1688

"But Love, who had hitherto but play'd with her Heart, and given it naught but pleasing, wanton Wounds, such as afforded only soft Joys, and not Pains, resolv'd, either out of Revenge to those Numbers she had abandon'd, and who had sigh'd so long in vain; or to try what power he had upon so fickl...

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1689

"Ah, Sister! (reply'd the dejected Henault) your Counsel comes too late, and your Reasons are of too feeble force, to rebate those Arrows, the Charming Isabella's Eyes have fix'd in my Heart and Soul"

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1942

"It has to be on that stage / And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and / With meditation, speak words that in the ear, / In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, / Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound / Of which, an invisible audience listens, / Not to the play, but to itself, ex...

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)