Date: w. 1821, 1840

Poetry "reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1842

"For now with Fancy's glass they see"

— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)

Date: 1842

"E'en the mind's eye a glassy mirror shews, / And far too deeply her bold pencil draws"

— Blamire, Susanna (1747-1794)

Date: 1842

"The images of past delight / Have fleeted from her troubled sight, / And left no perfect form behind / On the dim mirror of the mind"

— Herbert, William (1778-1847)

Date: 1854

"Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1859

"No dust has settled on one's mind then [at breakfast-time], and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1859

"But you must have perceived long ago that I have no such lofty vocation, and that I aspire to give no more than a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"But then, it is open to some one else to follow great authorities and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

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...

— Buchanan, Robert (1841–1901)

Date: 1785, 1881

"Brehm his own Mind survey'd, / As mortal eyes (thus finite we compare / With infinite) in smoothest mirrors gaze"

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)