Date: 1900

"One of these two must ever be, viz., that a man has his fancies in right discipline, turning, leading, and commanding them; or they him. Either they must deal with him, take him up short (as they say), teach him manners, and make him know to whom he belongs; or, this will be his part to teach th...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1919

"My memories simply trooped the colour."

— Cummings, Bruce Frederick [pseud. W. N. P. Barbellion] (1889-1919)

Date: 1922

"Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: 1922

"Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind / To mask the meaning of your dreamy tale, / Your guarded life too exquisitely frail / Against the daggers of my warring mind."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 1928

"As Irish Lovers use to make Address / By Darting Rushes at their Mistresses, / That do more Execution then the Darts / And Bows and Arrows [are] us'd to Conquer hearts."

— Butler, Samuel (1613-1680)

Date: 1949-1952, 1953

"Hard, hard work, excavating and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable t...

— Bellow, Saul (1915-2005)

Date: 1970

"If it goes off / If my imagination detonates, orphans me."

— Dunlap, Mary (1949-2003)

Date: July, 2015 [1983]

"Marx taught us in fact to understand once and for all what implacable work the unknown, the infinite vanquished victors, carry out in the societies that would prefer to ignore them, as well as within ourselves; what tunnels they dig, what blast-holes they prepare even inside those who hate them ...

— Lattes, Franco [Franco Fortini] (1917-1994)

Date: 1990

"But now I rock a bar stool and I drink for two / Just pondering this time bomb in my mind."

— John Linnell and John Flansbaugh [They Might Be Giants]

Date: 1992

"No doubt suicide would turn out to be the violent preface to yet another span of nauseating consciousness, of diminishing spirals and tightening nooses, and memories like shrapnel tearing all day long through his flesh."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)