Date: c. 10-8 BC

"quidquid praecipies, esto brevis, ut cito dicta / percipiant animi dociles teneantque fideles: / omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat" [Whatever precepts you give, be concise; that docile minds may soon comprehend what is said, and faithfully retain it. All superfluous instructions flow from ...

— Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BC - 8 BC)

Date: 3rd Century

"The black color of Ethiopia, my homeland, became my lot when it was engendered by the fiery rays of the sun. But my soul, full of white blossoms, won the favor of my understanding master; for beauty is inferior to the nobility of the soul shrouded by my black body."

— Anonymous

Date: 1614, 1638

"The soules of Women and Lovers, are wrapt in the port-manque of their senses."

— Overbury, Sir Thomas (bap. 1581, d. 1613)

Date: 1657

"Alas! alas! my flesh is too too weak, / And may be conquer'd; thou maist eas'ly break / This brittle Casket: but my inward minde / A jewel is which thou shalt never finde."

— Billingsley, Nicholas (bap. 1633, d. 1709)

Date: 1666

"O truly royal! who behold the law, / And rule of beings in your Maker's mind; / And thence, like limbecs, rich ideas draw, / To fit the levelled use of humankind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"But knowledge is as food, and needs no less / Her temperance over appetite, to know / In measure what the mind may well contain; / Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns / Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"First crept / The parsimonious emmet, provident / Of future; in small room large heart enclosed"

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

Date: 1681

"Some livelier spark of heaven, and more refined / From earthly dross, fills the great poet's mind."

— Duke, Richard (1658-1711)

Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

Date: 1683

"Invention, Memory, and Wit, should stay; / And all their Treasures in this Turrit lay."

— Shipman, Thomas (1632-1680)