Date: 1594

"Goodness is seen with the eye of the understanding. And the light of that eye, is reason."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

Date: 1712

"Our Intellectual, like the Body's Eye, / Whilst in the Womb, no Object can descry; / Yet is dispos'd to entertain the Light, / And judge of Things when offer'd to the Sight."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"[W]e are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude; but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity,...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)