Date: 1854

"He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been--in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away--by the fervor of this reproach."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"For you remember how he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember how, he sneaked, and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I h...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"I ha' lookn at't an thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball"

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"And it is but a twin fact with this, that in France alone woman has had a vital influence on the development of literature; in France alone the mind of woman has passed like an electric current through the language, making crisp and definite what is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1854

"The former have more exaltation, perhaps more nobility of sentiment, and less consciousness in their intellectual activity--less of the 'femme auteur', which was Rousseau's horror in Madame d'Epinay; but the latter have a richer fund of ideas--not more ingenuity, but the materials of an addition...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

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: 1854

"The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required for spontaneous activity; the voltaic-pile is not strong enough to produce crystallizations; phantasms of great ideas float through her mind, but she has not ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1855

"Far from the springtide gale, and joyous day, / In the deep caverns of Despair ye lay"

— Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850)

Date: 1857

"I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain / Behind environed: what high tragedy / In the dark secret chambers of her skull / Was acting"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)