Date: 1684

"Nor were these Fruits in a rough Soil bestown / As Gemms are thick'st in rugged Quarries sown."

— Oldham, John (1653-1683)

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: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"But since it is not easy to review all the connections together, and moreover, since our task is not so much to retain them in our memory as to distinguish them with, as it were, the sharp edge of our mind, we must seek a means of developing our intelligence in such a way that we can discern the...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"So the same light of the mind which enabled them to see (albeit without knowing why) that virtue is preferable to pleasure, the good preferable to the useful, also enabled them to grasp true ideas in philosophy and mathematics, although they were not yet able fully to master such sciences"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1685

"That I have sinn'd, yet sure to none of you / I ever gave offence: my sins at least, / Were acted in the closet of my breast"

— Clark, William (fl. 1663-1685)

Date: 1686, 1712

"When first my Soul put on its fleshly Load, / It was Imprison'd in the dark Abode; / My Feet were Fetters, my Hands Manacles, / My Sinews Chains, and all Confinement else; / My Bones the Bars of my loath'd Prison grate; / My Tongue the Turn-key, and my Mouth the Gate."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1712

"O! that some usual Labour were injoyn'd, / And not the Tyrant Vice enslav'd my mind! / No weight of Chains cou'd grieve my captive Hands, / Like the loath'd Drudg'ry of its base Commands."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Ruffians and Bravo's may kill, but the most Victorious Nations, and the bravest Generalls, were ever those whose Minds were polish'd, whose Arms receiv'd a Lustre from Virtue, and who could command their own Passions."

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

Date: 1689

"[Y]et will any one think, that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his nonage"

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1690

"O there's the Rock, on which my Reason splits: / Wou'd that were all!"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700); [Plautus, Molière]