Date: 1588

"Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest and keeps incessantly whirling arounnd building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it."

— Montaigne, Michel Eyquem seigneur de (1533-1592)

Date: 1588

"My mind to me a kingdom is; / Such perfect joy therein I find / That it excels all other bliss / Which God or nature hath assign'd."

— Dyer, Sir Edward (1543-1607)

Date: 1588

"I laugh not at another's loss, / Nor grudge not at another's gain; / No worldly waves my mind can toss; / I brook that is another's bane."

— Dyer, Sir Edward (1543-1607)

Date: 1586, 1589

"The law of nature is sence and feeling, which everie one hath in himself, and in his conscience, whereby he discerneth between good and evil, as much as sufficeth to take from him the cloke of ignorance, in that he is reprooved even by his owne witnes."

— La Primaudaye, Pierre de (b. ca. 1545); Thomas Bowes (fl. 1586)

Date: 1586, 1589

"The minde is as a white paper, wherein as a man groweth in age and judgement, he writeth his cogitations and thoughts, which the studie of letters and learning do affoord him."

— La Primaudaye, Pierre de (b. ca. 1545); Thomas Bowes (fl. 1586)

Date: 1589

"And this phantasie may be resembled to a glasse as hath bene sayd, whereof there be many tempers and manner of makinges, as the perspectiues doe acknowledge, for some be false glasses and shew thinges otherwise than they be in deede, and others right as they be in deede, neither fairer nor foule...

— Puttenham, George (1529-1590/91)

Date: 1590

The body is a Castle

— Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599)

Date: 1590?, 1623

"How angerly I taught my brow to frown / When inward joy enforced my heart to smile. "

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1590?, 1623

"His heart [is] as far from fraud as heaven from earth."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1590?, 1623

"Say that upon the altar of her beauty / You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)