Date: 1651, 1668

"Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himselfe entangled in words, as a bird in lime twiggs; the more he st...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little summs into a greater, without considering whether those little summes were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the errour visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to cl...

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1651, 1668

"For words are wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the mony of fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever, if but a man."

— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

Date: 1652

"Tis but a brief and compendious flame, shut up, and imprison'd in a narrow compasse"

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"But the publishing and manifestation of this Law which must give notice of all this, does flow from that heavenly beame which God has darted into the soul of man; from 'the Candle of the Lord', which God has lighted up for the discovery of his owne Lawes; from that intellectual eye which God has...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"There are stamp'd and printed upon the being of man, some clear, and undelible principles, some first and Alphabetical Notions; by putting together of which it can spell out the Law of Nature"

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"I speak now in relation between the Oppressor and the oppressed; the inward bondages I meddle not with in this place, though I am assured that, if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the mind, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisy, envy, sorrow, fears, desperation and madness, are al...

— Winstanley, Gerrard (bap. 1609, d. 1676)

Date: 1652

"So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and ...

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1652

"There's scatter'd in the Soul of Man some seeds of light, which fill it with a vigorous pregnancy, with a multiplying fruitfulnesse, so that it brings forth a numerous and sparkling posterity of secondary Notions, which make for the crowning and encompassing of the Soul with happinesse."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1942

"It has to be on that stage / And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and / With meditation, speak words that in the ear, / In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, / Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound / Of which, an invisible audience listens, / Not to the play, but to itself, ex...

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)