Date: September 10, 1836

"These are examples of Reason’s momentary grasp of the sceptre; the exertions of a power which exists not in time or space, but an instantaneous in-streaming causing power."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events of to-day, -- this he shall hear and promulgate."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"The cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1848

"It is often obscure, often half-told; for he who wrote it, in his clear seeing of the things beneath, may have been impatient of detailed interpretations; for if we choose to dwell upon it and trace it, it will lead us always securely back to that metropolis of the soul’s dominion from which we ...

— Ruskin, John (1819-1900)

Date: 1858

"His faculties were so well balanced and combined, that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well-ordered commonwealth."

— Bancroft, George (1800-1891)

Date: April, 1871

"In cases like the Caliph Omar's, it governs all other desires, absorbs the whole nature, and rules the whole life."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"When the inability to prevent the recurrence of the idea is very great, so that the reason is powerless on the mind, the consequent "conviction" is an eager, irritable, and ungovernable passion."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: 1883-1885

"Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, stands a mighty commander, and unknown sage--he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body."

— Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900)