Date: 1803

"And all the floating thoughts we find / Upon the surface of the mind."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: August 1817

"Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to a sentiment of admiration;--whenever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, ...

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

Date: 1820

"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1860

"She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas-a-Kempis, and the 'Christian Year' (no longer rejected as a 'hymn-book') that they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of h...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

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)