Date: 1851

"No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1854

"She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight of his mind."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as its...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"I ha' lookn at't an thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: April, 1871

"Intensity. This is the main cause why the ideas that flash on the minds of seers, as in Scott's description, are believed; they come mostly when the nerves are exhausted by fasting, watching and longing; they have a peculiar brilliancy, and therefore they are believed."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: 1883

"Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars / With memory of the old revolt from Awe, / He reached a middle height, and at the stars, / Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank"

— Meredith, George (1828-1909)

Date: January, 1884

"Now the first difficulty of introspection is that of seeing the transitive parts for what they really are. If they are but flights to a conclusion, stopping them to look at them before the conclusion is reached is really annihilating them. Whilst if we wait till the conclusion be reached, it so ...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion, or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"From the dawn of an individual consciousness to its close, we find each successive pulse of it capable of mirroring a more and more complex object, into which all the previous pulses may themselves enter as ingredients, and be known."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"But as the distribution of brain-tension shifts from one relative state of equilibrium to another, like the aurora borealis or the gyrations of a kaleidoscope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that the brain's faithful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, that its rate of chang...

— James, William (1842-1910)