Date: 1744, 1753

"A Metaphor from Mechanism, I think, will very plainly illustrate my Thoughts on this Subject [of wit and judgment]: For let a Machine, of any kind, be joined together by an ingenious Artist, and I dare say, he will be best able to take it apart again: a Bungler, or an ignorant Person, perhaps, m...

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768)

Date: 1763

"After all, are we not a little in the machine style, not to be able to withdraw our love when our esteem is at an end?"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1777

"Col. Dormer, though he knew the human heart, had never yet thought of taking his nieces in more active scenes of life: he had fallen into the common mistake of people past the meridian of their days, who, feeling tranquillity their greatest good, do not sufficiently reflect that it is insipid at...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1777

"She saw something like just drawing in the dark shades of his pencil, though the lines seemed a good deal exaggerated: she reflected, she doubted; but, after settling a balance in her mind, the found her own scale preponderate."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1797

"But the subtlety of self-love still eluded his enquiries, and he did not detect that pride was even at this instant of self-examination, and of critical import, the master-spring of his mind."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1860

"As for Tom's school course, it went on with mill-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting or unintelligible ideas."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentration of desire, Mr Tulliver retained the feeling towards his 'little wench' which made her presence a need to him though it would not suffice to cheer him. She was still the desire of his eyes, but the sweet spring of fatherly love was now mi...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1889

"Her mind became like a machine out of work—rusty, creaking, difficult to set going."

— Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925)

Date: June 19, 2000

"The record she'd given me was playing in my mind, and I kept trying to shut it off."

— Packer, ZZ (b. 1973)