Thomas Nashe

from The Terrors of the Night:

A dream is nothing else but a bubbling scum of froth of the fancy, which the day hath left undigested; or an after-feast made of the fragments of idle imaginations.

You must give a wounded man leave to groan while he is in dressing. Dreaming is no other than groaning, while sleep our surgeon hath us in cure.

A rich man delights in nothing so much as to be uncessantly raking in his treasury, to be turning over his rusty gold every hour. The bones of the dead, the devil counts his cheif treasury, and therefore is he continually raking amongst them; and the rather he doth it, that the living which hear it should be more unwilling to die, insomuch as after death their bones should take no rest.

Tullius Hostilius, who took upon him to conjure up Jove by Numa Pompilius, had no sense to quake and tremble at the wagging and shaking of every leaf but that he thought all leaves are full of worms, and those worms are wicked spirits.

The spirits of the fire which are the purest and perfectest are merry, pleasant, and well-inclined to wit, but nevertheless giddy and unconstant.