Date: January, 1884

"A difference of intimacy, of warmth, of continuity, similar to the difference between a sense-perception and something merely imagined -- which seems to point to a special content in each several stream of consciousness, for which Ego is perhaps the best specific name"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1890

"A 'river' or a 'stream' is the metaphor by which" consciousness "is most naturally described" so that one may talk of "the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1890

"Have you got a brook in your little heart, / Where bashful flowers blow, / And blushing birds go down to drink, / And shadows tremble so?"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1890

"The wizard-fingers never rest, / The purple brook within the breast / Still chafes its narrow bed."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1891

"So those high orthodoxies came to be / Quick seeds in me of heterodox opinion, / And, ere I wist, my thoughts were all at sea, / And drifted, holden by no wise dominion."

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1891

"In him there was a faith serene and strong, / In me an unrest, like the rush of water"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1893

"Thy mind is like a crystal brook / Wherein clean creatures live at ease / In sun-bright waves or shady nook."

— Gilder, Richard Watson (1844-1809)

Date: 1892, 1899

"The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence."

— James, William (1842-1910)