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)

Date: January, 1888

"The past is all of one texture--whether feigned or suffered--whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder of the body."

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

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: 1890

"The soul selects her own society, / Then shuts the door; / On her divine majority / Obtrude no more."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1891

"And it did store the mind with furniture -- / In forms antique, forbidding peaceful slumber, / But morticed well, and fashioned to endure, / Hard to get into, or out of heads they cumber"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1892

"So, safer, guess, with just my soul / Upon the window-pane / Where other creatures put their eyes, / Incautious of the sun."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"A deed knocks first at thought, / And then it knocks at will."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"It then goes out an act, / Or is entombed so still / That only to the ear of God / Its doom is audible."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"The body grows outside,-- / The more convenient way,-- / That if the spirit like to hide, / Its temple stands alway // Ajar, secure, inviting."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)