Date: 1691
"Wandring one Evening thro' a Cypress Grove--(I won't be positive, it might be Hazle, but t'other sounds better) revolving in my rambling Brain the Varietyes of Human Affairs, happen'd i' the Drove of Thoughts, that swarm'd up and down my Noddle to reflect on my own self (Sir, Your Humble Servant...
preview | full record— Dunton, John (1659–1732)
Date: May 10, 1704
"And whereas the mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, does never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and low, of good and evil, his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted, till, having...
preview | full record— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)
Date: 1760-7
"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1992
"It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields."
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)
Date: 2006
"Weber still saw the rarest of butterflies, fluttering mind, its paired wings pinned to the film in obscene detail."
preview | full record— Powers, Richard (b. 1957)
Date: 2009, trans. 2012
"As all the thoughts and images of consciousness began to move in directions over which I had no control, and I seemed to be lying there watching them, like a kind of lazy sheepdog of the mind, I knew sleep was around the corner."
preview | full record— Knausgaard, Karl Ove (b. 1968)