Date: 1760

"I found the spirit very busy, though I thought somewhat odly employed: she was running over a number of niches, or impressions, on the fibres of the brain, some of which I observed she renewed with such force, that she almost effaced others, which she passed over untouched, though interspersed a...

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760

"This place, where we are, is the seat of memory; and these traces, which you see me running over thus, are the impressions made on the brain by a communication of the impressions made on the senses by external objects."

— Johnstone, Charles (c.1719-c.1800)

Date: 1760-7

"When Dolly has indited her epistle to Robin, and has thrust her arm into the bottom of her pocket hanging by her right-side;--take that opportunity to recollect that the organs and faculties of perception, can, by nothing in this world, be so aptly typified and explained as by that one thing whi...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"Love has insinuated itself too far into your mind, for you ever to drive it thence. It has eaten its way, has penetrated into its inmoft recesses, like a corrosive menstruum, whose impressions you will never be able to efface, without deftroying at the same time all that virtuous sensibility you...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"Soon as I close my eyes, here in this brain, where all my nerves are concentred, her dark eyes are imprinted. Here--I don't know how to describe it:--but if I shut my eyes, hers are immediately before me like a sea, like a precipice, and they occupy all the fibres of my head."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"A secret sympathy had attached her to him from their first acquaintance; and now, after so long an intimacy, after passing through so many different scenes, the impression was engraved on her mind for ever."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1796

"The pleasures which he had just tasted for the first time were still impressed upon his mind: his brain was bewildered, and presented a confused chaos of remorse, voluptuousness, inquietude, and fear."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)

Date: 1796

"The damning contract weighed heavy upon his mind; and the scenes in which he had been a principal actor, had left behind them such impressions as rendered his heart the seat of anarchy and confusion."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)