Date: 1610
Man "into himself can draw / All, all his faith can swallow, or reason chaw ... All the round world, to man is but a pill."
preview | full record— Donne, John (1572-1631)
Date: 1662
"Flowers, rivers, woods, the pleasant air and wind, / With Sacred thoughts, do feed my serious mind."
preview | full record— Watkyns, Rowland (c. 1614-1664)
Date: 1667
"Good Conscience on God it self can roul; / 'Tis Aquavitæ to the swouning soul."
preview | full record— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)
Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674
"But knowledge is as food, and needs no less / Her temperance over appetite, to know / In measure what the mind may well contain; / Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns / Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind."
preview | full record— Milton, John (1608-1674)
Date: 1678
"Into his studious Closet to stuff his Lunatick head, since he can get nothing for his belly."
preview | full record— Porter, Thomas (1636-1680)
Date: 1691
"I say I've but one little tiney favour to beg, and then--and that is--that he'd maturely Weigh, Swallow, Chew the Cud, and soundly digest this following first Book, before he throw it out agen, for should he make too much hast, and too greedily read it over, as 'tis to be fear'd the pleasantness...
preview | full record— Dunton, John (1659–1732)
Date: 1701
"That Opinion, Tremilia, denotes a diseas'd Mind, which is as naturally averse to every thing that's pleasant, and agreeable, as a Diseas'd Body is to wholsom Food."
preview | full record— Baker, Thomas (b. 1680-1)
Date: 1705, 1712
"[W]ise Men on sound Reason ground Belief: / How that they find what for the Soul is good, / As by their Smell and Taste they judge their Food; / For who but each Man's Reason ought to try / 'Tis Faith, who must be sav'd or damn'd thereby."
preview | full record— Ward, Edward (1667-1731)
Date: 1709
"They fed the Body, but did feast the Mind."
preview | full record— Gould, Robert (b. 1660?, d. in or before 1709)
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 1711
"You have, in my Opinion, raised a good presumptive Argument from the increasing Appetite the Mind has to Knowledge, and to the extending its own Faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained Perfection of lower Creatures may, in the Limits of a short Life."
preview | full record— Hughes, John (1678?-1720)