Date: 1800

"Others, unemployed, were strolling to and fro, and testified to their vacancy of thought and care by humming or whistling a tune."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"My mind gradually expanded itself, as it were, for the reception of new ideas."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"The image of Achsa filled my fancy, but it was the harbinger of nothing but humiliation and sorrow."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1845

"They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: October 10, 1869

"Recitations alone readily degenerate into dusty repetitions, and lectures alone are too often a useless expenditure of force. The lecturer pumps laboriously into sieves. The water may be wholesome, but it runs through."

— Eliot, Charles William (1834-1926)

Date: 1892

"The broadest land that grows / Is not so ample as the breast / These emerald seams enclose."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)