Date: 3rd Century

"The black color of Ethiopia, my homeland, became my lot when it was engendered by the fiery rays of the sun. But my soul, full of white blossoms, won the favor of my understanding master; for beauty is inferior to the nobility of the soul shrouded by my black body."

— Anonymous

Date: 1581

"And for that the minde in infantes is like a payre of tables, wherein nothing is written, and like & tender twig which may be bowed euery way, it is cleare, that vertue or vice may easily be planted in it."

— Guazzo, Stefano (1530-1593); Pettie, George, trans. (1548-1589)

Date: 1598

"Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1598

"And why indeed 'Naso' but for smelling out / the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1598

"To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, / And therewithal to win me if you please."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1600

"Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord / In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance / His bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1602

"What says my Aesculapius, my / Galen, my heart of elder, ha?"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1605, 1640

"But yet, nevertheless, secundum majus et minus, a man may revisit and descend unto the foundations of his knowledge and consent; and so transplant it into another, as it grew in his own mind."

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

Date: 1605, 1640

"For it is in knowledges as it is in plants: if you mean to use the plant, it is no matter for the roots--but if you mean to remove it to grow, then it is more assured to rest upon roots than slips: so the delivery of knowledges (as it is now used) is as of fair bodies of trees without the roots;...

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

Date: 1605, 1640

"For as the wronging or cherishing of seeds or young plants is that that is most important to their thriving, and as it was noted that the first six kings being in truth as tutors of the state of Rome in the infancy thereof was the principal cause of the immense greatness of that state which foll...

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