17th century

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 9.5

Philosophical literature

I think, therefore I am.

Rene Descartes

Discourse on Method · 1637

★ 9.1

Thomas Fuller (churchman)

1650

★ 8.8

Play · Tragic play

Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

William Congreve

1697

★ 8.8

To be or not to be—that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep— To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 8.7

Sonnet · Poem

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 8.6

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Nature abhors a vacuum.

Baruch Spinoza

Ethics · 1677

★ 8.5

Curiosity...is a Lust of the mind.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 8.0

Long is the way And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.8

O fairest of Creation, last and best Of all God's works.

Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.8

Scientific literature

Isaac Newton

Principia · 1687

★ 7.5

Letter

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

1676

★ 7.4

Novel

Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.

Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote · 1615

★ 7.3

Scientific literature

Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts.

Isaac Newton

Principia · 1687

★ 7.3

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.3

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 7.3

Treatise · Political literature

John Locke

Two Treatises of Government · 1690

★ 7.2

Sonnet · Poem

But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 7.2

Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

Macbeth · 1616

★ 7.2

Her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red... I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

Sonnet · Poem

Shakespeare's Sonnets · 1609

★ 7.1

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Timon of Athens · 1616

★ 7.1

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 7.1

Of Man's First Disobedience, and the fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing, Heav'nly Muse.

The old pond- A frog leaps in, And a splash.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Man is a social animal.

Baruch Spinoza

Ethics · 1677

★ 7.1

Haiku · Poem

Matsuo Basho

1686

★ 7.1

We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.1

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the height of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.

All rising to great place is by a winding stair.

Paradise Lost · 1667

★ 7.1

Essay

Ancient times were the youth of the world.

1625

★ 7.0

Philosophical literature

Chiefly, the mould of a man's fortune is in his own hands.

1605

★ 7.0

Essay

1625

★ 7.0

He’s loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes.

For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 7.0

Philosophical literature

Novum Organum · 1620

★ 7.0

God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Look round the habitable world! how few Know their own good; or knowing it, pursue.

Pensees · 1662

★ 7.0

Poem

John Dryden

Satires of Juvenal · 1693

★ 7.0

Essay

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.

1625

★ 7.0

What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worn, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.

Pensees · 1670

★ 7.0

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Good counselors lack no clients.

Hamlet · 1616

★ 6.9

Play · Comedy (play)