Date: c. 43 AD
"Those things that men's untutored hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies--jewels, gold, silver, and polished tables, huge and round--all these are earthly dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature, can have no love, since it is itself light and uncumbered, wa...
preview | full record— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
Date: 1651, 1668
"And on the contrary, metaphors, and senseless and ambiguous words, are like ignes fatui; and reasoning upon them is wandering amongst innumerable absurdities; and their end, contention and sedition, or contempt."
preview | full record— Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)
Date: 1687
"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...
preview | full record— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"GOD I own cannot be denied to enlighten the Understanding by a Ray darted into the Mind immediately from the Fountain of Light"
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1691
"As the Eyes are the Windows to let in the Species of all exterior Objects into the dark Cels of the Brain, for the information of the Soul; so are they flaming Torches to reveal to those abroad how the Soul within is moved or affected."
preview | full record— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627–1705)
Date: 1702
"My Heart beats higher, and my nimble Spirits / Ride swiftly thro' their purple Channels round: / 'Tis the last blaze of Life: Nature revives / Like a dim, winking Lamp, that flashes brightly / With parting Light, and strait is dark for ever."
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: November 25, 1707; 1708
"No!--'tis my Glory that the Christian Light / Has dawn'd, like Day, upon my darker Mind, / And taught my Soul the noblest use of Reason; / Taught her to soar aloft, to search, to know / The vast eternal Fountain of her Being."
preview | full record— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)
Date: April 26, 1695; 1708
"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: 1712
"When she to foreign Objects Audience gives, / Their Strokes and Motions in the Brain perceives, / As these Perceptions we Ideas name, / From her own Pow'r and active Nature came, / So when discern'd by Intellectual Light, / Her self her various Passions does excite, / To Ill her Hate, to Good he...
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)
Date: 1712
"Quick, as a darted Beam of Light, they [the spirits] go, / Thro' diff'rent Paths to diff'rent Organs flow, / Whence they reflect as swiftly to the Brain, / To give it Pleasure, or to give it Pain."
preview | full record— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)