Date: 1701, 1704
"The application of our Thoughts to other Subjects is like looking upon the Rays of the Sun as it shines to us from a Wall, or upon the Image of it as it returns from a Watry Mirrour, but this is looking up directly against the Fons veri lucidus, the bright Source of Intellectual Light a...
preview | full record— Norris, John (1657-1712)
Date: 1737, 1743
"The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by shewing its Faults; as when a Stream discovers the Dirt at the bottom, it convinceth us of the transparency and purity of the Water."
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1788
There are those "whom the traffic of their race / Has robb'd of every human grace; / Whose harden'd souls no more retain / Impressions Nature stamp'd in vain; / All that distinguishes their kind, / For ever blotted from their mind; / As streams, that once the landscape gave / Reflected o...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1792
"As when in ocean sinks the orb of day, / Long on the wave reflected lustres play; / Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned / Glance on the darkened mirror of the mind."
preview | full record— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)
Date: 1815
The wavering motions of the mind are like "quivering light" reflected off a confined "crystal flood" in a brass cistern
preview | full record— Cowper, William (1731-1800)
Date: 1822
"Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me / As thus from sleep into the troubled day; / It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, / Leaving no figure upon memory's glass"
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)
Date: 1824
"What do I say--a mirror of my heart? / Are not thy waters sweeping, dark, and strong? / Such as my feelings were and are, thou art; / And such as thou art were my passions long."
preview | full record— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)
Date: August-November, 1871
"[B]ut the mind of Mr. Rossetti is like a glassy mere, broken only by the dive of some water-bird or the hum of winged insects, and brooded over by an atmosphere of insufferable closeness, with a light blue sky above it, sultry depths mirrored within it, and a surface so thickly sown with water-l...
preview | full record— Buchanan, Robert (1841–1901)
Date: 1992
"After a while, he no longer recognized what he was thinking and, just as a shop window sometimes prevents the onlooker from seeing the objects behind the glass and folds him instead in a narcissistic embrace, his mind ignored the flow of impressions from the outside world and locked him into a d...
preview | full record— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)