Date: 1651
"Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach."
preview | full record— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)
Date: 1656
"Thales argued, that the Load-stone, and Amber had soules; the first because it drawes Iron, the second Straw."
preview | full record— Stanley, Thomas (1625-1678)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"I shall not here enquire, though it may seem probable, that the Constitution of the Body does sometimes influence the Memory; since we oftentimes find a Disease quite strip the Mind of all its Ideas, and the flames of a Fever, in a few days, calcine all those Images to dust and confusion, which ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1724
"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...
preview | full record— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)
Date: 1798
"Objects or thoughts, that have been associated with pleasure, retain the power of pleasing; as the needle touched by the loadstone acquires polarity, and retains it long after the loadstone is withdrawn."
preview | full record— Edgeworth, Maria
Date: w. 1796, 1799
"My soul was held up by the power of God, as the needle by the loadstone, and I did by faith, with joy draw water out of these wells of salvation."
preview | full record— Osborn, Sarah (1714-1796)