Date: December 20, 1692; 1708

"I'm much concerned to hear you have your Health no better and, on this Occasion, cannot but deplore the great Losses the intellectual World, in all Ages, has suffer'd by, the strongest and soundest Minds possessing the most infirm and sickly Bodies. Certainly there must be some very powerful Cau...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: January 20, 1692/3; 1708

"But I perfectly agree with you concerning general Theories, that they are for the most part but a sort of waking Dreams, with which, when Men have warm'd their own Heads, they pass into unquestionable Truths, and then the ignorant World must be set right by them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: September 6, 1695; 1708

"To be reveng'd on you therefore for putting my Brains into such a Ferment, I have resolved to be so impertinent as to send you the Result of my Meditations upon the Subject."

— Synge, Edward (1659-1741)

Date: 1709, 1714

"The only Poison to Reason is Passion."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1709, 1714

"We may be charg'd perhaps with wilful Ignorance and blind Idolatry, for having taken Opinions upon Trust, and consecrated in our-selves certain Idol-Notion, which we will never suffer to be unveil'd, or seen in open light."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1709, 1714

"The Forgers of such Morals have been amply endow'd: and the World has paid roundly for its Philosophy; since the original plain Principles of Humanity, and the simple honest Precepts of Peace and mutual Love, have, by a sort of spiritual Chymists, been so sublimated, as to become the highest Cor...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1709, 1714

"We may imagine what we please of a substantial solid Part of Beauty: but were the Subject to be well criticiz'd, we shou'd find, perhaps, that what we most admir'd, even in the Turn of outward Features, was but a mysterious Expression, and a kind of shadow of something inward in the Temper."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1709, 1714

"They who overlook the main Springs of Action, and despise the Thought of Numbers and Proportion in a Life at large, will in the mean Particulars of it, be no less taken up, and engag'd; as either in the Study of common Arts, or in the Care and Culture of mere mechanick Beautys. The Models of Hou...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1709, 1714

"The Specter still will haunt us, in some Shape or other: and when driven from our cool Thoughts, and frighted from the Closet, will meet us even at Court, and fill our Heads with Dreams of Grandure, Titles, Honours, and a false Magnificence and Beauty; to which we are ready to sacrifice our high...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1716

"To say that souls are intelligent points is to use an expression that is insufficiently exact. When I call them centers of concentrations of external things, I am speaking analogically."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)