Date: 1665

"And since Gold-smiths and Refiners are wont all the year long carefully to save the very sweepings of their Shops, because they may contain in them some Filings, or Dust of those richer Metals, Gold and Silver; I see not why a Christian may not be as careful, not to lose the Fragments and lesser...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1665

"As Jonathan made those very things, whereby his Enemies, the Philistins, sought to intrap, or destroy him, Incouragements to fight with them, and Omens of his Victory over them. And as scarce any Time is so short, but that things so Agile, and asspiring as the Flames of a Devout Soul, may take a...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1665

"We need not in this case, as in most others, make an uneasie Preparation to entertain our Instructors; for our Instructions are suddenly, and as it were cut of an Ambuscade, shot into our Mind, from things whence we never expected them, so that we receive the advantage of learning good Lessons, ...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

Date: 1665

"The like frailties are to be found in the Memory; we often let many things slip away from us, which deserve to be retain'd; and of those which we treasure up, a great part is either frivolous or false; and if good, and substantial, either in tract of time obliterated, or at best so overwhelmed a...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1665

"Thus all the uncertainty, and mistakes of humane actions, proceed either from the narrowness and wandring of our Senses, from the slipperiness or delusion of our Memory, from the confinement or rashness of our Understanding, so that 'tis no wonder, that our power over natural causes and effects ...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1665

"The Understanding is to order all the inferiour services of the lower Faculties; but yet it is to do this only as a lawful Master, and not as a Tyrant."

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1665

The understanding "must examine, range, and dispose of the bank which is laid up in the Memory; but it must be sure to make distinction between the sober and well collected heap, and the extravagant Idea's, and mistaken Images, which there it may sometimes light upon."

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1666

"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1666

Elocution is " that art of clothing and adorning that thought so found and varied, in apt, significant, and sounding word."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)