Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Mammon led them on-- / Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell / From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts / Were always downward bent."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"The writers displayed many geometrical truths before my very eyes, as it were, and derived them by means of logical arguments"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"How, as it were in an instant, do our Minds, with one glance, see all the parts of a demonstration, which may very well be called a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put into words, and step by step shew it another?"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"The Mind very often sets it self on work in search of some hidden Idea, and turns, as it were, the Eye of the Soul upon it."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1691

"But again I won't forestall ye, tho' really the matter presses, and my pregnant Brain labours with so many painful pangs to be obstetricated, that I verily fear I shall burst before I come to disgorge it thro' my fruitful Quill, to avoid which I'll Ramble on as fast as I can scamper thro' this P...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1691

"So that here by a dear-bought Experience, I found, that the wandering Fancy of Man (nay, that even Life it self) is a it were but a meer Ramble or Fegary after the drag of something that doth itchifie our Senses, which when we have hunted home, we find nothing but a meer delusion."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

Date: 1704

"A master workman shall blow his nose so powerfully as to pierce the hearts of his people, who were disposed to receive the excrements of his brain with the same reverence as the issue of it."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Read 1680-1681, published 1705

"But of this, and the manner of contracting of the Pupil, more, when I come to explain that part of the Eye; that which intention it for at present is, only to explain how the Eye becomes as it were a Hand, by which the Brain feels, and touches (the Objects, by creating a Motion in the Retina, th...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1708

"Attend therefore with the Ears of thy Heart, and look sharply with the Eyes of thy Understanding, upon that which I shall shew thee; it may be thou may'st find so much in it, as may serve to lead thee into the right way."

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)

Date: 1708

"He made no doubt but that all those things which are contain'd in the Law of God [i.e. the Alcoran] concerning his Command, his Angels, Books and Messengers, the Day of Judgment, Paradise and Hell, were Resemblances of what Hai Ebn Yokdhan had seen; and the Eyes of his Understanding were open'd,...

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)