Date: 1604

"For, as the Ratte running behinde a paynted cloth, betrayeth her selfe; even so, a Passion lurking in the heart, by thoughts and speech discovereth it selfe, according to the common Proverbe, ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, from the aboundance of heart, the tongue speaketh: for as a Riv...

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1759

"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1767

This ideal region is indeed the proper sphere of Fancy, in which she may range with a loose rein, without suffering restraint from the severe checks of Judgment; for Judgment has very little jurisdiction in this province of Fable."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1774

"As acuteness of smell carries a dog along the path of the game for which he searches, and secures him against the danger of quitting it, upon another scent: so this happy structure of imagination leads the man of genius into those tracks where the proper ideas lurk, and not only enables him to d...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Let an Hypochondriack then have his park well stocked. Let him get as many agreeable ideas into his mind as he can; and though there may in wintery days seem: a total vacancy, yet when summer glows benignant, and the time of singing of birds is come, he will be delighted with gay colours and enc...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1850

"The relation discovered, must be something remote from all the common tracks and sheep-walks made in the mind."

— Smith, Sydney (1771-1845)

Date: 1952

De la partie la plus noire de mon âme, à travers la zone hachurée me monte ce désir d'être tout à coup blanc [Out of the blackest part of my soul, through the zone of hachures, surges up this desire to be suddenly white].

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: December 30, 2015

"The brain was gently pulsating within. It resembled a small animal in a grotto. Or the meat of an open mussel."

— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)