Date: 1791

"If you can but kindle in your mind any strong desire, if you can but keep predominant any wish for some particular excellence or attainment, the gusts of imagination will break away, without any effect upon your conduct, and commonly without any traces left upon the memory."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1796

"The effect [of wit on the mind] is strong,--because it's odd, / Like fire electric from a clod; / Or when fix'd air puts out a light, / Tho' vital makes it blaze more bright."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1798 [1797?]

"Elf, we'll promote the cause of human weal, / To yon dissecting sage these truths reveal. / Show him what use the Renal Capsule serves, / The liquid Fire that floats along the nerves; / Give him the office of the Spleen to find, / And let him see the Nidus of the mind."

— Jones, Jenkin [Captain] (fl. 1798)

Date: 1914

"A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins."

— Joyce, James (1882-1941)

Date: 1922

"I plucked my soul out of its secret place, / And held it to the mirror of my eye, / To see it like a star against the sky, / A twitching body quivering in space, / A spark of passion shining on my face."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

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: 2000

"I glimpsed a molten core to consciousness, a protean heat where everything could be reshaped. Yes, a molten core, like the core of the earth, deeper than the deposits of civilisation, beyond the complacencies of archaeology."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: April 24, 2011

"God seeks a destiny in all things fired / in the kiln of the sun or the mind."

— Lee, Li-Young (b .1957)

Date: July 5, 2014

"And so, while in the past, we turned to Freud's mystic writing pad to think of memory as a palimpsest, burying material under layers of inscription, now we see a memory as a live wire sitting in the psyche waiting for a spark."

— Halberstam, Jack [Judith] (b. 1961)

Date: August, 21, 2015

"But this summer, 'The New Yorker' published a piece that wrapped old news in new terror. And what had been buried in the recesses of Northwestern minds suddenly flared."

— Egan, Timothy (b. 1954)