Date: 1677

"He hath a Lamp, but that Lamp hath no Oyl. / He hath a Soul, but what doth that embrace?"

— Speed, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. 1679?)

Date: 1670, rev. 1678

"It's a lightening before death ... This is generally observed of sick persons, that a little before they die their pains leave them, and their understanding and memory return to them; as a candle just before it goes out gives a great blaze."

— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627-1705)

Date: w. 1677, published October, 1682

"Some Beams of Wit on other souls may fall, / Strike through and make a lucid intervall; / But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, / His rising Fogs prevail upon the Day."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1680

"Bright Reason's ray, / By damp of Wine, within this Hemisphere, / Was quench'd before: and now dim sense, to stay, / Must not expect, long after Her."

— Darby, Charles (bap. 1635, d.1709)

Date: 1682

"'Tis not a Flash of Fancy which sometimes / Dasling our Minds, sets off the slightest Rimes; / Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done; / True Wit is everlasting, like the Sun; / Which though sometimes beneath a cloud retir'd, / Breaks out again, and is by all admir'd."

— Sheffield, John, first duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1647-1721)

Date: November, 1682

"Dim, as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars / To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers, / Is reason to the soul; and as on high, / Those rolling fires discover but the sky / Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray / Was lent not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"And as those nightly tapers disappear / When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere / So pale grows reason at religion's sight: / So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: November, 1682

"Then those who follow'd reason's dictates right; Liv'd up, and lifted high their natural light; / With Socrates may see their Maker's Face, / While thousand rubric-martyrs want a place."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1682

"The one 'tis true is wholly void of Reason, but it is also an equivalent Darkness of Mind, that possesses the other."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"Even though problems such as these can often be solved without a method and can sometimes perhaps be solved more quickly through good luck than through method, nevertheless they might dim the light of the mind and make it become so habituated to childish and futile pursuits that thereafter it wo...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)