Date: Written not before 512

"So I continued to ponder all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what I had heard, but rather chewing the cud of constant meditation."

— Boethius (480-524/5)

Date: 731

"Ond he eal þa he in gehærnesse geleornian meahte mid hine gemyndgade, ond swa swa clæne neten eodorcende in þæt sweteste leoð gehwerfde." And he was able to learn all that he heard; and remembering within him, just as a clean animal chewing cud [ruminating], he turned it into the swe...

— Bede (672/3 - 735)

Date: 1257

"Of such successive steps is Jacob's Ladder made, with its top reaching to heaven; and the throne of Solomon upon which is seated the King most wise, truly peaceful and full of love, the Bridegroom most fair, who is all delight, upon whom angels desire to look, toward whom holy souls aspire as th...

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

Date: 1500?

"Take hede of thy horse, whyche ys thy body, that he be made buxome and mylde unto the soule whyche ys hys master."

— Anonymous

Date: 1741

"He supposed that a philosopher's brain was like a great forest, where ideas ranged like animals of several kinds; that those ideas copulated and engendered conclusions; that when those different species copulate, they bring forth monsters and absurdities; that the major is the male, the minor th...

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

Date: Tuesday, March 12, 1751

"There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)