Date: 370-300 B.C.

"Moreover, the conclusion of this argument of yours is a fine one,--how that for every man who knows not how to make use of his soul it is better to have his soul at rest and not to live, than to live acting according to his own caprice; but if it is necessary for him to live, it is better after ...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"Let the soul be compared to a pair of winged horses and charioteer joined in natural union."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"At the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three parts--two having the form of horses and the third being like a charioteer; the division may remain."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

Date: 1596

"Vnderstanding is that facultie in the soale whereby we vse reason: and it is the more principall part seruing to rule and order the whole man, and therefore it is placed in the soule to be as the wagginer in the waggin."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: c. 1603

"In fact, had not political conditions and prospects put an end to these mental voyages, many another coast of error would have been visited by those mariners."

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

Date: 1607

"Therefore Iulian the Apostata who had flood of inuention, although that whole flood could not wash or rinch away that one spot of his atheisme, he (though not knowing him a right) could say the body was the chariot of the soule, which while it was well manag'd by discretion the cunning coachman,...

— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)

Date: 1612

"Solid and sober natures, have more of the ballast, then of the saile"

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

Date: 1654

"[T]here are cases wherein this law must vaile to an higher, which is the law of Conscience: Woe be to that man who shall tye himselfe so close to the letter of the law, as to make shipwrack of conscience; And that bird in his bosome will tell him, that if upon what ever pretences, he shall willi...

— Hall, Joseph (1574-1656)

Date: 1657

The fancy is a "Boundlesse, restlesse faculty, free from all engagements, diggs without spade, sails without Ships, Flies without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed, in a moment striding from the Center to the circumference of the world, by a kind of omnipotency creating and ...

— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)