Date: 1605, 1640
"By which wordes he declares, not obscurely, that God hath framed the Mind of Man, as a Mirror or Glasse capable of the Image of the universall world, and as joyfull to receive the impressions thereof, as the eye joyeth to receave light; and not only delighted in the beholding, the variety of thi...
preview | full record— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"These simple Ideas, when offered to the mind, the Understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones in it self, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the Images or Ideas, which, the Objects set before it, do therein produce."
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"I shall not here enquire, though it may seem probable, that the Constitution of the Body does sometimes influence the Memory; since we oftentimes find a Disease quite strip the Mind of all its Ideas, and the flames of a Fever, in a few days, calcine all those Images to dust and confusion, which ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1708
"Besides, he has given an account of those several steps and degrees by which a Man is brought to this perfection; till his Soul is like a polish'd Looking-glass, in which he beholds the Truth: and then he swims in pleasure, and rejoyces exceedingly in his Mind, because of the impressions of Trut...
preview | full record— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)
Date: 1731
"Now Sense, that is a Living Eye or Mirror, as soon as ever it is Converted toward this Object, will here Passively perceive an Appearance of an Individual Thing, as existing without it, White and Triangular, without any Distinction Concretely and Confusedly together; and it will perceive no more...
preview | full record— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)
Date: 1751
"His mind does not receive the impression of the moral world, in the same manner, as wax receives the impression of a seal. It does not reflect the image of it, in the same manner, as a mirror reflects its images: it has a peculiar cast and turn given to its conceptions, admirably ordered to exal...
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"Oh! that I could express, that I could describe, these great conceptions, with the same warmth, with the same energy, that they are impressed on my soul!" [Literal translation: "Oh could you only express, could you the breathe forth upon this paper all that lives so warm and full, that it might ...
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: 1788
There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790
"Her mind resembled an empty mirror, which has no character, no images of its own, borrows every impression from some passing object, and, if left to itself, would for ever remain vacant."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1796
"No drug, nor juice of all the acid tribe, / Can move the Tints, which Glassy Pores imbibe; / So no mean prejudice, no bribes, nor art, / Efface th' Impressions of an Upright Heart."
preview | full record— Bishop, Samuel (1731-1795)