Date: 1777

"[H]er spirits droop more than her body; she is thoughtful and melancholy when she thinks she is not observed, and, what pleases me worse, affects to appear otherwise, when she is"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

Attempts at gaiety may look like "a conquest over the natural pensiveness of [the] mind"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"His youth has been enlightened by letters, and informed by travel; but what is still more valuable, his mind has been early impressed with the principles of manly virtue."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[T]here is, methinks, a languor in your last letter--or is it but the livery of my own imagination, which the objects around me are constrained to wear?"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"He appeared to feel in his situation that dependence I mentioned; in mean souls, this produces servility; in liberal minds, it is the nurse of honourable pride."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1814

"His powers of apprehension were so uncommonly quick as almost to resemble intuition, and the chief care of his preceptor was to prevent him, as a sportsman would phrase it, from over-running his game — that is, from acquiring his knowledge in a slight, flimsy, and inadequate manner."

— Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832)

Date: 1887

"You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"It is a mistake to think that that little room [the 'brain-attic'] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent"

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)