Date: 1783

"Does the human soul go up to the pia mater, as a housewife does to her garret, only at certain times? Or, if she makes it her place of abode, are there any corners of it which she is unacquainted with, or neglects to look into?'

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1785

"He conjectured, that the soul is seated in a small gland in the brain, called the pineal gland: That there, as in her chamber of presence, she receives intelligence of every thing that affects the senses, by means of a subtile fluid contained in the nerves, called the animal spirits; and that sh...

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1787

"Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them, which grow up, and through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies among themselves, and generate a multitude, seize the citadel or the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1791

"His mind resembled the vast ampitheatre, the Colisaeum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgment, which like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drives then b...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1831

"On set occasions and at appropriate times we examine our stores, and ascertain the various commodities we have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. Like the governor of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take acc...

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: April, 1871

"Many beliefs, in Coleridge's happy phrase, slumber in the 'dormitory of the soul'; they are present to the consciousness, but they incite to no action."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: January, 1888

"So that the little people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces."

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Date: January, 1888

"For myself--what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland unless he has changed his residence since Descartes, the man with the conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the gener...

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Date: 1900

"Jealous for thy authority in thy mansion-house and outward family, but not in the least for thy authority within, in thy chiefest mansion, thy principal economy? Are the servants here to talk high and in what tone they please? Must theirs be the last word, their dictates the rules of action? O s...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: July, 1962; November 22, 1962; 1973

"Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade--demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out."

— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)