Date: c. 1603

"The fact is, my son, that the human mind in studying nature becomes big under the impact of things and brings forth a teeming brood of errors."

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

Date: c. 1603

"On waxen tablets you cannot write anything new until you rub out the old. With the mind it is not so; there you cannot rub out the old till you have written in the new."

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

Date: 1603

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, / And thus the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1603

"Give me that man / That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him / In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, / As I do thee."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1604

"[W]e know not how soone our Lord and master will call us to a reckoninge and therefore it behoveth us to have our accompts alwayes perfect and the bookes of our consciences made up in readinesse."

— Downham, John (1571-1652)

Date: 1604, 1622

A thought may, "like a poisonous mineral," gnaw one's inwards

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1604

"How are the Soule and Body, Spirite and Flesh coupled together, what chaynes, what fetters imprison a spirituall Substance, an immortal Spirit in so base, stinking; and corruptible a carkasse?"

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1604

"For, as the Ratte running behinde a paynted cloth, betrayeth her selfe; even so, a Passion lurking in the heart, by thoughts and speech discovereth it selfe, according to the common Proverbe, ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, from the aboundance of heart, the tongue speaketh: for as a Riv...

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1605

"But from whatsoever root or cause this restiveness of mind proceedeth, it is a thing most prejudicial; and nothing is more politic than to make the wheels of our mind concentric and voluble with the wheels of fortune."

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

Date: 1605

"This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the schoolmen, who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the c...

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