Date: 1869

One's immortal deeds may be "Engrav'd ... / On ev'ry heart in this braid land"

— Oliphant, Carolina, Lady Nairne (1766-1845)

Date: 1869

On a tree's "fair stem were mony names, which now nae mair I see, / But they're engraven on my heart--forgot they ne'er can be!"

— Oliphant, Carolina, Lady Nairne (1766-1845)

Date: Late Autumn, 1882

"A letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the mind alone, without corporeal friend?"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"We noticed smallest things, / Things overlooked before, / By this great light upon our  minds / Italicized, as 't were."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1900

"My mind felt like a measure with the feet marked on it, and no matter what I thought of that night, it had to be measured with the same rule.”

— Flora MacDonald Denison (1867-1921)

Date: 1963

"And she set something on my tongue and in panic I bit down, and darkness wiped me out like chalk on a blackboard."

— Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963)

Date: 1993

"I didn't need to speak, I could lay thoughts out in his mind like they were a sheet."

— Campion, Jane (b. 1954)

Date: 1999

"I tried to keep my mind white and blank."

— Budnitz, Judy (b. 1973)

Date: 2003

"In fact, it seems quite plausible that some version of this axiom (perhaps 'Even a paranoid can have enemies,' uttered by Henry Kissinger) is so indelibly inscribed in the brains of baby boomers that it offers us the continuing illusion of possessing a special insight into the epistemologies of ...

— Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (1950-2009)

Date: 2010

"The idea of sex with a woman, of 'having a lesbian lover,' was simply unthinkable, like living alone at the North Pole or deciding to become a lycanthrope. If the thought existed at all, it was a mote, a sweet nothing--a little 'feather on the breath of God,' barely sensed now and then, but most...

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)