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: 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: c. 43 AD

"This poor body, the prison and fetter of the soul, is tossed hither and thither upon it punishments, upon it robberies, upon it diseases work their will. But the soul itself is sacred and eternal, and upon it no hand can be laid."

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

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: 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: 1604

"How are the Soule and Body, Spirite and Flesh coupled together, what chaynes, what fetters imprison a spirituall Substance, an immortal Spirit in so base, stinking; and corruptible a carkasse?"

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)