Date: 395

"For there is, within, the mouth of the heart, where he, who spake these words, and wrote them for us to speak, desired of the Lord that the watch and door of Continence should be set for him."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 395

"But in what He next adds, in order that we might recognize the mouth of the heart, the slowness of our heart would not follow, did not the Truth deign to walk even with the slow."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 395

"The inner man hath an inner mouth, and this the inner ear discerns: what things go forth from this mouth, go out of the heart, and they defile the man."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 397-401

"I was held fast not by the iron of another but by my iron will."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 397-401

"I have spilled and scattered ... my thoughts, the innermost bowels of my soul, are torn apart with the crowding tumults of variety."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 397-401

"Only a few succeed in arriving at these reasons with the eye of the mind, and when one does arrive, insofar as is possible, the very one who arrives does not abide in them, but as it were the eye (of the mind) itself is beaten back and repelled."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 399-426

"The Trinity's "own light seemed to be present around us, still, no trinity appeared to us in nature, for in the midst of that splendor we did not keep the eye of our mind fixed steadily upon searching for it ... because that ineffable light beat back our gaze, and the weakness of our mind was co...

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 413-427

"Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred writings of the Hebrews say, 'Blessed is the people whose God is the Lord.'"

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"[The Active Intellect's] relation to our souls is that of the Sun to our vision."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)

Date: c. 1016-1021

"So, initially coming to know something is like treating the eye, but then when the eye is healthy, whenever it wants it looks at something from which a given form is taken, while when it turns from that thing, that [thing] comes to be in potency proximate to act."

— Avicenna [Ibn Sīnā] (c. 980-1037)