Date: 1633
"within my heart I made / Closets; and in them many a chest; / And like a master in my trade, / In those chests, boxes; in each box, a till: / Yet grief knows all, and enters when he will."
preview | full record— Herbert, George (1593-1633)
Date: 1635
"Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, / But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue."
preview | full record— Donne, John (1572-1631)
Date: 1641
The "I" is not present in the body as a sailor is in a ship but is joined and intermingled with it
preview | full record— Descartes, René (1596-1650)
Date: 1641
"You may say that you occupy the citadel in your brain and there receive whatever messages are transmitted by the animal spirits which move through the nerves, and sense-perception thus occurs there, where you dwell, despite the fact that it is said to occur throughout the body."
preview | full record— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)
Date: 1642
"The heart of man is the place the Devils dwell in: I feel sometimes a Hell within my self; Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast, Legion is revived in me."
preview | full record— Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
Date: 1651
"The agent is a doctor or teacher, the passive a scholar; and his office is to keep and further judge of such things as are committed to his charge; as a bare and rased table at first, capable of all forms and notions."
preview | full record— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)
Date: 1651, 1668
"For the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1651, 1668
"As there have been doctors, that hold there be three souls in a man; so there be also that think there may be more souls, (that is, more sovereigns,) than one, in a commonwealth; and set up a supremacy against the sovereignty; canons against laws; and a ghostly authority against the civil; worki...
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1652
"So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and ...
preview | full record— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)
Date: 1653
"When we of childish toys do think, a fair / May be in th' brain, where crowds of fairies are, / And in each stall may all such knacks be sold, / As rattles, bells, or bracelets made of gold; / Pins, whistles, and the like may be brought there, / And thus within the head may be a fair."
preview | full record— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)