Date: 1900, 1901
"We move amidst generalities and symbols, as within a tilt-yard in which our force is effectively pitted against other forces; and fascinated by action, tempted by it, for our own good, on to the field it has selected, we live in a zone midway between things and ourselves, externally to things, e...
preview | full record— Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941)
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...
preview | full record— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)
Date: 1901-2, 1902
"A mental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitial alteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright by dead habit. But a new perception a sudden emotional shock or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and t...
preview | full record— James, William (1842-1910)
Date: 1909
"Thanks to his wonderful memory, everything he read was stored up for use or ornament, till his mind resembled a huge curiosity shop."
preview | full record— Long, William Joseph (1867-1952)
Date: 1911
"The psychical is divided (to speak metaphorically and not metaphysically) into monads that have no windows and are in communication only through empathy."
preview | full record— Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938)
Date: 1911
"As for Mr. Woodhouse, whose most famous sentences hang like texts in frames on the four walls of our memories, he is, next to Don Quixote, perhaps the most perfect gentleman in fiction; and under outrageous provocation he remains so."
preview | full record— Bradley, A.C. (1851-1935)
Date: 1919
"I never cease to interest myself in the Gothic architecture of my own fantastic soul."
preview | full record— Cummings, Bruce Frederick [pseud. W. N. P. Barbellion] (1889-1919)
Date: 1946
"At their best, they erect a grammatical artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges and recesses, decorate the main structure."
preview | full record— Gerth, Hans H. (1908-1978) and C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
Date: 1947, 1958
"Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion."
preview | full record— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)
Date: 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951
"It is certainly not then--not in dreams--but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower."
preview | full record— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)