Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal note."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"[H]orrour and doubt distract / His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir / The Hell within him; for within him Hell / He brings, and round about him, nor from Hell / One step, no more than from himself, can fly / By change of place."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Him there they found / Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, / Assaying by his devilish art to reach / The organs of her fancy, and with them forge / Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise / Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise / At least distempered, discontented thoughts, / Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, / Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Mine eyes he closed, but open left the cell / Of fancy, my internal sight"

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"So from the root / Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves / More aerie, last the bright consummate floure / Spirits odorous breathes: flours and thir fruit / Mans nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd / To vital Spirits aspire, to animal, / To intellectual, give both life and s...

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1660, 1668

"Have you not seen an early-rising Lark / Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark, / Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher, / Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire? / Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice / His Soul become a Bird of Paradise."

— Wild, Robert (1615/16-1679)

Date: 1670

Weakness of mind may be water-like or wax-like

— Greville, Fulke, first Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1554-1628)

Date: 1671

"But he though blind of sight, / Despis'd and thought extinguish't quite, / With inward eyes illuminated / His fierie vertue rouz'd / From under ashes into sudden flame"

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1672?

A woman may "erect her Throne" in a "sullen Heart"

— Sedley, Sir Charles (1639-1701)