Date: 1636

"So some have looked over their hearts by signs at one time, and have to their thinking found nothing but hypocrisy, unbelief, hardness, self-seeking; but not long after, examining their hearts again by the same signs, they have espied the image of God drawn fairly upon the table of their hearts."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"And our Minds represent to us those Tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the Brass and Marble remain, yet the Inscriptions are effaced by time, and the Imagery moulders away."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How much the Constitution of our Bodies, and the make of our animal Spirits, are concerned in this; and whether the Temper of the Brain make this difference, that in some it retains the Characters drawn on it like Marble, in others like Free-stone, and in others little better than Sand, I shall ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: Friday, October 26, 1711

"A Man, they say, wears the Picture of his Mind in his Countenance; and one Man's Eyes are Spectacles to his who looks at him to read his Heart."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1731

"For as the Mind of God, which is the Archetypal Intellect, is that whereby he always actually comprehends himself, and his own Fecundity, or the Extent of his own Infinite Goodness and Power; that is, the Possibility of all things; So all Created Intellects being being certain Ectypal Models, or...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1733-1735

"Various rude Arts the untaught Ancients knew / To fix Ideas e'er they fled away, / And Images of Thought to Sight convey. / Brass, Wax, or Wood the Characters retain'd, / Some liv'd on Slates, and some the Canvas stain'd; / Some trac'd in Iv'ry, or engrav'd on Stone, / Or sunk in Clay, e're Bi...

— Bowden, Samuel (fl. 1733-1761)

Date: 1733

"Amurath himself was also in the Fleet, and and hearing that the Tunis Vessel was commanded by the Renegado Dragut, and that he had some young Men on board arm'd, and three Women, one of them an admirable Beauty, he made them all come on board his Ship. He presently knew Rosalinda, whose Picture ...

— Morando, Bernardo (1589-1656); Gaspard-Moïse-Augustin de Fontanieu; Anonymous

Date: 1744

"A mere existence or being is an indifferent thing, ('tis a Rasa Tabula) that may be coloured over with sin or holiness: and accordingly it receives its value from these; as a picture is esteemed not from the materials upon which it is drawn, but from the draught itself."

— South, Robert (1634-1716)

Date: 1765

"If all [the mind] had was the mere capacity to receive those items of knowledge--a passive power to do so, as indeterminate as the power of wax to receive shapes or of a blank page to receive words--it would not be the source of necessary truths"

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1782

"A letter is the soul's portrait. It is not a cold image, with its stagnation, so remote from love; it lends itself to all our emotions; turn by turn it grows animated, it enjoys, it rests"

— Laclos, Pierre (-Ambrose-François) Choderlos de (1741-1803)