Date: 1594

"For a spur of diligence therefore we have a natural thirst after knowledge ingrafted in us. But by reason of that original weakness in the instruments, without which the understanding part is not able in this world by discourse to work, the very conceit of painfulness is as a bridle to stay us."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"His meaning is, that by force of the light of Reason, wherewith God illuminateth every one which cometh into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood, and good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is; which will himself not revealing by any extraordina...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"And the Law of Reason or human Nature is that which men by discourse of natural Reason have rightly found out themselves to be all for ever bound unto in their actions."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"And to conclude, the general principles thereof are such, as it is not easy to find men ignorant of them, Law rational therefore, which men commonly use to call the Law of Nature, meaning thereby the Law which human Nature knoweth itself in reason universally bound unto, which also for that caus...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1594

"I deny not but lewd and wicked custom, beginning perhaps at the first amongst few, afterwards spreading into greater multitudes, and so continuing from time to time, may be of force even in plain things to smother the light of natural understanding; because men will not bend their wits to examin...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1595 [c. 1579 in ms.]

The poet is "a passionate lover of that unspeakable and everlasting bewtie to be seene by the eyes of the mind"

— Sidney, Philip, Sir (1554-1586)

Date: 1595 [c. 1579 in ms.]

"Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature brings forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, c...

— Sidney, Philip, Sir (1554-1586)

Date: 1596

"What tell you me of conscience? Conscience was hanged long agoe."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1596

"But vnles they take better heed, and preuent the danger by repentance, Hanged-conscience vvill revive and become both gibbet and hangman to them either in this life or the life to come."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)

Date: 1596

"For as the sicke man, vvhen he seemes to sleepe and take his rest, is invvardly full of troubles: so the benummed and drousie conscience wants not his secret pangs and terrours; and when it shal be roused by the iudgement of God, it waxeth cruell and fierce like a wild beast."

— Perkins, William (1558-1602)