Date: w. 1365, trans. 1579

"For what tempests and madnesse is there in these foure passions, to wit, to hope or desire, and to reioice, to feare and to bee sorie, whiche trouble the poore and miserable minde, by driuing him with sodeine windes and gales, in course far from the hauen into the middes of the dangerous rocks?"

— Petrarch (1304-1374); Twyne, Thomas (1543–1613)

Date: 1580

The Pyrrhonist's mind "is a white sheet prepared to take from the finger of God what form soever it shall please him to imprint therein."

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

Date: 1581

"And for that the minde in infantes is like a payre of tables, wherein nothing is written, and like & tender twig which may be bowed euery way, it is cleare, that vertue or vice may easily be planted in it."

— Guazzo, Stefano (1530-1593); Pettie, George, trans. (1548-1589)

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: 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: 1592

Elizabeth preferred not "to make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts, except the abundance of them did overflow into overt and express acts and affirmations."

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

Date: 1593

"[A]s wee apparaile our selves in Beastes skinnes, in self same sort we clothe our soules in theyr sinnes"

— Nashe, Thomas (bap. 1567, d. c. 1601)

Date: 1594

"The soul of man being therefore at the first as a book, wherein nothing is and yet all things may be imprinted; we are to search by what steps and degrees it riseth unto perfection of knowledge."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)