Date: March 24, 1659
"[Oliver Cromwell's] body was well compact and strong, his stature under 6 foot (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of a vast treasury of natural parts."
preview | full record— Maidston, John
Date: 1708, 1714
"'Twas a sign that this Philosopher believ'd there was a good Stock of Visionary Spirit originally in Human Nature."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: 1708, 1714
"Something there will be of Extravagance and Fury, when the Ideas or Images receiv'd are too big for the narrow human Vessel to contain."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: 1709, 1714
"They may perhaps be Monsters, and not Divinitys, or Sacred Truths, which are kept thus choicely, in some dark Corner of our Minds: The Specters may impose on us, whilst we refuse to turn 'em every way, and view their Shapes and Complexions in every light."
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: July 23, 1703; 1714
"Time, I daily find, blots out apace the little Stock of my Mind, and has disabled me from furnishing all that I would willingly contribute to the Memory of that Learned Man.."
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: September 10, 1726
"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: September 17, 1726
"And what is Education, for the most part, but stocking a Child's Brain with Chains of Images?"
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: September 17, 1726
"I Need not expatiate upon other Characters; for I have too good an Opinion of your Readers, to doubt of their beginning now to be sensible that most Men speak and act but from a fortuitous Concourse of Images, or a Train of them stored up in the Brain."
preview | full record— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)
Date: November 10, 1750
"Is it possible that experience should produce error, and that the exemption of old people from the passions of youth, should be no better a privilege than to leave room for the love of money, which seems then to engross the whole soul, and to fill up the place of all the other passions!"
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1754
"Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multi...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)