page 1 of 3     per page:
sorted by:

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"These similitudes or relations are finely said by Lord Bacon to be "the same footsteps of nature impressed upon the various subjects of the world"[1] and he considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of axioms common to all knowledge."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

preview | full record

Date: 1843

"Pleasure is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative film; we develop it later, when we are at home and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom, the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people."

— Kierkegaard, Søren (1813-1855)

preview | full record

Date: 1848

"Choak not the granary of thy noble mind / With more bad bitter grain"

— Keats, John (1795-1821) [in collab. with Brown]

preview | full record

Date: 1848

An old man's heart is narrow, tenantless of hopes, and stuffed with memories

— Keats, John (1795-1821) [in collab. with Brown]

preview | full record

Date: 1850

"The thirst of living praise, / Fit reverence for the glorious Dead, the sight / Of those long vistas, sacred catacombs, / Where mighty minds lie visibly entombed, / Have often stirred the heart of youth, and bred / A fervent love of rigorous discipline."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

preview | full record

Date: 1850

"My mind was at that time / A parti-coloured show of grave and gay, / Solid and light, short-sighted and profound; / Of inconsiderate habits and sedate, / Consorting in one mansion unreproved. "

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

preview | full record

Date: 1850

"Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad / Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

preview | full record

Date: 1851

"No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

preview | full record

Date: 1851

"But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

preview | full record

Date: 1851

"The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one’s own mind, is of less value than a much smaller amount that has been fully considered."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

preview | full record

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.