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)

Date: 97

"Let us contemplate Him with our understanding, and look with the eyes of our soul to His long-suffering will"

— St. Clement (30-100)

Date: 101

"I indeed think that the old man ought to be sitting here, not to contrive how you may have no mean thoughts nor mean and ignoble talk about yourselves, but to take care that there be not among us any young men of such a mind that, when they have recognized their kinship to God, and that we are f...

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

Date: 386

Reason lets you "see God with your mind as the sun is seen with the eye."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 386

"The mind has as it were, eyes of its own, analogous to the soul's senses."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 386

"I, Reason, am in minds as the power of looking is in the eyes."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 386

"The eye of the mind is healthy when it is pure from every taint of the body, that is, when it is remote and purged from desire of mortal things."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 386

"It is impossible to show God to a mind vitiated and sick."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 392-418

"Led by the joyfulness of that inward, and intelligible sound ... with the eye of the mind ... catching a glimpse, sudden and momentary as it was "

— St. Augustine (354-430)