Date: 1603

A people may be "muddied, / Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers / For good Polonius' death."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1609

"My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;/ And I myself see not the bottom of it."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1610-11, 1623

"A solemn air, and the best comforter / To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains, / Now useless, boiled within thy skull."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: w. 1610-11, 1623

"Their understanding / Begins to swell, and the approaching tide / Will shortly fill the reasonable shores / That now lie foul and muddy."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1612-3, 1623

"I know you have a gentle, noble temper,/ A soul as even as a calm."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1676

"Nature has her cheats, stums a brain, and puts sophisticate dullness often on the tasteless multitude for true wit and good humour"

— Etherege, Sir George (1636-1691/2)

Date: 1680

"'Tis an Error as groundless as Vulgar, to think that there goes no more to the furnishing a Poet, than a Wind-mill in the Head, a Stream of Tattle, and convenient Confidence; whereas no Exercise of the Soul requires a more compos'd Thought, more sparingness of Words, more Modesty and Caution in ...

— Tate, Nahum (c. 1652-1715)

Date: 1693

"My heart is now calm and even like a standing water, and I could wish it would so remain, without the Flux, and Reflux of a passionate tyde agitated and driven at the mercy of the winds; sometimes rising with the floods of Joy, above the banks of moderation: and afterwards discending into the Gu...

— Higden, Henry (bap. 1645)

Date: 1696

"I doubt, Old Gentleman, you have such a Torrent of Philosophy running throngh your Pericranium, that it has washt your Brains away."

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)