Date: January, 1884

"If so coarse a thing as a telephone-plate can be made to thrill for years and never reduplicate its inward condition, how much more must this be the case with the infinitely delicate brain?"

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"And in states of extreme brain-fag the horizon is narrowed almost to the passing word, -- the associative machinery, however, providing for the next word turning up in orderly sequence, until at last the tired thinker is led to some kind of a conclusion."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1889

"Her mind became like a machine out of work—rusty, creaking, difficult to set going."

— Mary Cholmondeley (1859-1925)

Date: 1890

"The brain within its groove / Runs evenly and true."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Every individual soul, in short, like every individual machine or organism, has its own best conditions of efficiency. A given machine will run best under a certain steam-pressure, a certain amperage; an organism under a certain diet, weight, or exercise."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1902

"The whole process, unless interrupted, would according to this hypothesis, run down like an alarm-clock; or it would be as with a row of bricks appropriately arranged: as the top portion of the first brick received a push in the direction of the other bricks, it would fall on the second brick, w...

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1906

"From the old-world point of view, the American had no mind; he had an economic thinking-machine which could work only on a fixed line. "

— Adams, Henry (1838-1918)

Date: 1906

"The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine forest."

— Adams, Henry (1838-1918)

Date: December 28, 1932

"My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery--always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud."

— Woolf, Virgina (1882-1941)