Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of her own experience to him, and had understood from him the scope of his great work, also of attrac...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1890

"Have you got a brook in your little heart, / Where bashful flowers blow, / And blushing birds go down to drink, / And shadows tremble so?"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"The wizard-fingers never rest, / The purple brook within the breast / Still chafes its narrow bed."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1914

"I think with all his purity Emerson had within him the turbid stream of passion and desire; for all his hard-cut granite features he knew the instincts of the weakling and the slave; and for all his sweetness, he had the tiger and the jackal in his soul."

— de Cleyre, Voltairine (1866-1912)

Date: 1921

"I know what my heart is like / Since your love died: / It is like a hollow ledge / Holding a little pool / Left there by the tide, / A little tepid pool, / Drying inward from the edge."

— Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892-1950)

Date: 1946

"Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible) / to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)

Date: 1970

"Words came without volition, sinking very slowly through his mind like pebbles."

— Murdoch, Iris (191-1999)

Date: 1980

"What is thought after all, what is dreaming, but swim and flow, and the images they seem to animate?"

— Robinson, Marilynne (b. 1943)

Date: 1980

"And here we find our greatest affinity with water, for like reflections on water our thoughts will suffer no changing shock, no permanent displacement."

— Robinson, Marilynne (b. 1943)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)