Date: 1717

"I render back the Treasure of thy Heart: / When in some new fair Breast it finds a Room, And I shall lie neglected in my Tomb; / Remember, oh! remember, the fair She / Can never love thee, darling Youth! like me."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1723

In one's Garret-Closet one's Muse may "take Possession": "Poetry being one of those subtle Devils, that if driven out by never so many firm Purposes, good Resolutions, Aversion to that Poverty it intails upon its Adherents; yet it will always return and find a Passage to the Heart, Brain, ...

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: 1723

"Mine [heart] open lies, without the least Defence; / No Guard of Art; but its own Innocence; / Under which Fort it could fierce Storms endure: / But from thy Wit I find no Fort secure."

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

Date: 1745

"New to each hour what low delight succeeds, / What precious furniture of hearts and heads!"

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

Date: 1760, 1850

"Yet still in fancy's painted cells / The soul-inflaming image dwells."

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1764, 1773

"Heav'n search my soul, and if thro' all its cells / Lurk the pernicious drop of pois'nous guile; / Full on my fenceless head its phial'd wrath / May fate exhaust"

— Shenstone, William (1714-1763)

Date: w. 1797-1807, published 1893

"Beneath his feet shot thro' him as he stood in the Human Brain / And all its golden porches grew pale with his sickening light"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: w. 1797-1807, published 1893

"he stores his thoughts / As in a store house in his memory he regulates the forms / Of all beneath & all above."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

Date: February 4, 2012

"That sounds like stop-and-go mindfulness--focusing on the lives of other creatures to dispel the usual mind theaters that plague us."

— Ackerman, Diane (b. 1948)

Date: July 23, 2012

"I'm O.K., you tell them, but with each passing week the depression deepens. You try to describe it. Like someone flew a plane into your soul. Like someone flew two planes into your soul."

— Díaz, Junot (b. 1968)