Date: c. 501 B.C.
"It is difficult to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul."
preview | full record— Heraklitus (fl. 504-1 BCE)
Date: c. 43 AD
"It is the mind that makes us rich; this goes with us into exile, and in the wildest wilderness, having found there all that the body needs for its sustenance, it itself overflows in the enjoyment of its own goods."
preview | full record— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
Date: 101
"I mean the things which belong to him as a man, the marks (stamps) in his mind with which he came into the world, such as we seek also on coins, and if we find them, we approve of the coins, and if we do not find the marks, we reject them."
preview | full record— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)
Date: 1641
"Now admittedly, it is not necessary that I ever light upon any thought of God; but whenever I do choose to think of the first and supreme being, and bring forth the idea of God from the treasure house of my mind as it were, it is necessary that I attribute all perfections to him, even if I do no...
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1651, 1668
"The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting ratiocinatio; and that which we in bills or books of account call items, they call nomina, that is names; and thence it seems to proceed, that they extended the word ratio to the faculty of reckoning in all other things."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1651, 1668
"For words are wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the mony of fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever, if but a man."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1656
"He is too froward, that will refuse a piece of coin that is current throughout the world, because it is not stamped after his own fancy."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1657
Fancy is "The immateriall Coyner. That makes a bodilesse Creation."
preview | full record— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)
Date: 1667, 1710
"And there are very few that have any true Kindness for it, and thou knowest not the Worth of that Jewel, thy Soul; but here, here's a Friend, if thou wilt but leave it with him, he will take care of it, it shall not be marted away for nothing."
preview | full record— Janeway, James (1636?-1674)