Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Few people who have not expressly reflected on the matter realize how constantly this factor of inhibition is upon us, how it contains and moulds us by its restrictive pressure almost as if we were fluids pent within the cavity of a jar."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1903

"When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of the brimming mind."

— Wickham, E. C. (1834-1910); Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BC - 8 BC)

Date: 1907

"No matter how much we may talk of the preservation of psychical dispositions, nor how many metaphors we may summon to characterize the storage of ideas in some hypothetical deposit chamber of memory, the obstinate fact remains that when we are not experiencing a sensation or an idea it is, stric...

— Angell, James Rowland (1869-1949)

Date: 1908, 1911

"The soul of a good man had become empty of all psychological content, of grounds and consequences; it has become a pure white slate, upon which fate writes its absurd command, and this command will be followed blindly, rashly, and fiercely to the end."

— Lukács, Georg [György] (1885-1971)

Date: 1922

"The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together."

— Eliot, T. S. (1888-1965)

Date: 1922

"The joy in your maturity at length, / The peace that filled my soul like cooling wine, / When you responded to my tender strength, / And pressed your heart exulting into mine."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Date: 1929

"Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind."

— Yeats, W. B. (1865-1939)

Date: 1929

"Such fullness in that quarter overflows / And falls into the basin of the mind / That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, / For intellect no longer knows / Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known."

— Yeats, W. B. (1865-1939)

Date: 1940

"Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work."

— Raphaelson, Samson (1894-1983)

Date: 1975

"In the preceding months he had prepared himself with meticulous care, filling his mind with distilled knowledge, drop by drop, until, on the eve of the first paper (Old English Set Texts) it was almost brimming over."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)