Date: 1783
"While we listen to a discourse, or read a book, how often , in spite of all our care, does the fancy wander, and present thoughts quite different from those we have in view! "
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1785
"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"
preview | full record— Paley, William (1743-1805)
Date: 1919
"My memories simply trooped the colour."
preview | full record— Cummings, Bruce Frederick [pseud. W. N. P. Barbellion] (1889-1919)
Date: August, 22, 2015
"Some philosophers claim that we know nothing of the external world outside our minds--nothing compared to what sways in our minds, in the long, twisting corridors of memory, the vast mental rooms with half-open doors, the ghosts chattering beneath the chandeliers of imagination."
preview | full record— Lightman, Alan (b. 1948)