Date: 1665

The understanding "must examine, range, and dispose of the bank which is laid up in the Memory; but it must be sure to make distinction between the sober and well collected heap, and the extravagant Idea's, and mistaken Images, which there it may sometimes light upon."

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

Date: 1667

"But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly receiv...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1667, 1710

"Thus a Child of God, if he loose his Estate, his Liberty, and all his outward Injoyments, he counts all these but inconsiderable, as long as his Soul is safe, his great Treasure is out of their Reach."

— Janeway, James (1636?-1674)

Date: 1670

"Having to his great Wit added the ballast of Learning"

— Walton, Izaak (1593-1683)

Date: 1673

Modest "is indeed a vertu of a general influence; does not only ballast the mind with sober and humble thoughts of ones self, but also steers every part of the outward frame."

— Allestree, Richard (1611/2-1681)

Date: 1675, 1746

"The Ground needs no other midwifery in bringing forth Weeds, than only the neglect of the Husbandman's Hand to pluck them up; the Air needs no other Cause of Darkness, than the Absence of Sun; nor water of Coldness, than its Distance from the Fire, because these are the genuine Products of ...

— Westminster Assembly (1643-1652)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"But as for that prodigious paradox of Atheists, that cogitation itself is nothing but local motion or mechanism, we could not have thought it possible, that ever any many should have given entertainment to such a conceit, but that this was rather a meer slander raised upon Atheists."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1678, 2nd edition in 1743

"That Vital Sympathy, by which our Soul is united and tied fast, as it were with a Knot, to the Body, is a thing that we have no direct Consciousness of, but only in its Effects."

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1682

"There is not so Disproportionate a Mixture in any Creature, as that is in Man, of Soul and Body ... But, a Good Sword is never the worse for an ill Scabbard."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

Date: 1682

"Our Passions are nothing else but certain Disallowable Motions of the Mind; Sudden, and Eager; which, by Frequency, and Neglect, turn to a Disease; as a Distillation brings us first to a Cough, and then to a Phthisick."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)