Date: 1860

"We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment or whether we will renounce that for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us -- for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: April 1861

"My heart is like a rainbow shell / That paddles in a halcyon sea."

— Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"For the most glutinously indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests except the retention of his snuffbox, concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch."

— 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: 1871-2, 1874

"In the beginning of dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1890

"Imps in eager caucus / Raffle for my  soul."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"I've known her from an ample nation / Choose one; / Then close the valves of her attention / Like stone."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"The sweeping up the heart, / And putting love away / We shall not want to use again / Until eternity."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"Except thyself may be / Thine enemy; / Captivity is consciousness, / So 's liberty."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)