Date: August 31, 1837

"But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records; — must relinquish display and immediate fame."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1845

"Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1848

"O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, / Would all their colours from the sunset take: / From something of material sublime, / Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time / In the dark void of night."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

Date: 1850

"An auxiliar light / Came from my mind, which on the setting sun / Bestowed new splendour"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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)