Date: 1774

"In this journey, the understanding is the 'voiture' that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though at best you will now and then find some bad roads, and some bad inns."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"All arts having the same general end, which is to please, and addressing themselves to the same faculties through the medium of the senses, it follows that their rules and principles must have as great affinity as the different materials and the different organs or vehicles by which they pass to...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"It is, my dear M----, the same with the rest of our passions;--we have Reason given us for our rudder--Religion is our sheet anchor--our fixed star Hope--Conscience our faithful monitor--and Happiness the grand reward;--we all in this manner can preach up trite maxims."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1789

"Then he assured me, that one sin unatoned for was as sufficient to damn a soul as one leak was to sink a ship."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1793

In sleep "Our tired attention resigns the helm, ideas swim before us in wild confusion, and are attended with less and less distinctness, till at length they leave no traces in the memory."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: August 6 and 20, 1859

"The jaded cart-horse of the commonplace bourgeois mind falters of course in confusion in front of the ditch separating substance from appearance, and cause from effect; but one should not ride carthorses if one intends to go coursing over the very rough ground of abstract reasoning."

— Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)

Date: 1902

"Looking back upon our own thought, we observe no Subject, like an admiral on the bridge of his flagship, dictating and controlling, some man above the man or in the man; we only note a process of development which requires no such assumption."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1923

"His heart knocked like a Ford car trying to climb the roof of a Methodist church."

— Wilstach, Frank J.

Date: 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951

"It is certainly not then--not in dreams--but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower."

— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)