Date: 1754

"Look in my face; and, could my heart lie bare, / The Father would be seen engraven there"

— Jeffreys, George (1678-1755)

Date: February, 1821

"I said to myself, 'This is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper.'"

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

Date: 1851

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: November 22, 1990

"The nervous system adapts, is tailored, evolves, so that experience, will, sensibility, moral sense, and all that one would call personality or soul becomes engraved in the nervous system."

— Sacks, Oliver (b. 1933)

Date: 2007

"One's collection comes to symbolize the contents of one's mind."

— Updike, John (1932-2009)

Date: 2007

"Books externalize our brains, and turn our homes into thinking bodies."

— Updike, John (1932-2009)