Date: 1929

"Such fullness in that quarter overflows / And falls into the basin of the mind / That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, / For intellect no longer knows / Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known."

— Yeats, W. B. (1865-1939)

Date: 1938

Travel may "put a stopper on those memories you would like to resurrect. It does not always work, of course, sometimes the scent is too strong for the bottle, and too strong for me. And then the devil in one, like a furtive peeping Tom, tries to draw the cork."

— Du Maurier, Daphne, Lady Browning (1907-1989)

Date: 1938

"'If only there could be an invention,' I said impulsively, 'that bottled up a memory, like a scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.'"

— Du Maurier, Daphne, Lady Browning (1907-1989)

Date: 1940

"Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work."

— Raphaelson, Samson (1894-1983)

Date: April 15, 1971

"You've got a geranium in your cranium."

— Lederer, Esther [Ann Landers] (1918-2002)

Date: 1972

"My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare; / I had to cram so many things to store everything in there."

— Bowie, David [David Robert Jones] (1947-2016)

Date: 1975

"In the preceding months he had prepared himself with meticulous care, filling his mind with distilled knowledge, drop by drop, until, on the eve of the first paper (Old English Set Texts) it was almost brimming over."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1975

"Each morning for the next ten days he bore his precious vessel to the examination halls and poured a measured quantity of the contents on to the pages of ruled quarto. Day by day the level fell, until on the tenth day the vessel was empty, the cup was drained, the cupboard was bare"

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1975

"In the years that followed he set about replenishing his mind, but it was never quite the same. The sense of purpose was lacking--there was no great Reckoning against which he could hoard his knowledge, so that it tended to leak away as fast as he acquired it."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1984

"It is never entirely true that you don’t give a shit what others say about you, but you must throw it out of your mind."

— Baldwin, James (1924-1987)