Date: 1681

"For thou alone to people me, / Art grown a num'rous Colony; / And a Collection choicer far / Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

Date: 1684

"For certainly there must be some change in our mind when we have some thoughts and then others, and, in fact, ideas of things we are not actually thinking about are in our minds as the shape of Hercules is in rough marble."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1686

"But the false Image she will ne're erace, / Though far unworthy still to hold its place: / So hard it is, even Wiser grown, to take / Th' Impression out, which Fancy once did make."

— Killigrew, Anne (1660-1685)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"'Tis so many times in the capacities of Youth: they who can receive any impression like the Virgin-wax, will as easily suffer a defacement unless it be hardned and matur'd by Time: whereas others who are hard to be wrought upon like Steel, retain the Images which are Engraven on them with much m...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1687

"Yet sure we think 'em sensless stories, / The pageantry of some distempered Head, / Which fancies Pencil did delineate, / The broken visions of the living when they dream'd 'oth' dead."

— Rawlet, John (bap. 1642, d. 1686)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"Whence comes that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And in this Sense it is, that our Ideas are said to be in our Memories, when indeed, they are actually no where, but only there is an ability in the Mind, when it will, to revive them again; and as it were paint them anew on it self, though some with more, some with less difficulty, some more li...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by time, and the Imagery moulders away."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The pictures drawn in our Minds, are laid in fading Colours; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How much the Constitution of our Bodies, and the make of our animal Spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the Temper of the Brain make this difference, that in some it retains the Characters drawn on it like Marble, in others like Free-stone, and in others little better than Sand, I shall ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)