Date: 380-360 B.C.

"Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"And purification, as we saw some time ago in our discussion, consists in separating the soul as much as possible from the body, and accustoming it to withdraw from all contact with the body and concentrate itself by itself, and to have its dwelling, so far as it can, both now and in the future, ...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 101

"You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower."

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

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: 397-401

"The enemy had a grip on my will and from there made a chain for me and bound me."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"O, Warwick, I do bend my knee with thine, / And in this vow do chain my soul to thine."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: c. 1603

"Just when the human mind, borne thither by some favouring gale, had found rest in a little truth, this man presumed to cast the closest fetters on our understandings."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1607

"Whose soule by his selfe ignorance (not knowing what repast was most conuenient for his body) was pent vp and as it were fettred in these his corps as in her dungeon."

— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)

Date: 1615

"But by spirits we understand the primary and immediate instrument of the soul, which the Stoicks calleth 'the Band which tyeth the soul and the body.'"

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

Date: 1629

"Doth not this shew vnto vs, that  the body is but to the soule as a clogge tied to the legge."

— Cole, James (fl. 1629)