Date: 1800
"Every sense was an inlet of pleasure, because it was an avenue to knowledge; and my soul brooded over the world of ideas, and glowed with exultation at the grandeur and beauty of its own creations"
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)
Date: 1800
"[I]f my heart thus bounds till its mansion scarcely hold it, what must be my state tomorrow!"
preview | full record— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)
Date: 1851
"No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards."
preview | full record— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)
Date: 1854
"The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1854
"Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as its...
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1854
"She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming."
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1854
"All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obdura...
preview | full record— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)
Date: 1887
"You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose."
preview | full record— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
Date: 1887
"Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic."
preview | full record— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
Date: 1887
"It is a mistake to think that that little room [the 'brain-attic'] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent"
preview | full record— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)