Date: w. 1821, 1840

"The former [i.e., conception] is as a mirror which reflects, the latter [i.e., expression] as a cloud which enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communication"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

Poetry "reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: March 13, 1847

"As the sea, when it lies clam and deeply transparent, yearns for heaven, so may the pure heart, when it is calm and deeply transparent, yearn for God. As the sea is made pure by yearning for heaven alone; so may the heart become pure by yearning only for the Good. As the sea mirrors the elevatio...

— Kierkegaard, Søren (1813-1855)

Date: 1854

"Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: August-November, 1871

"[B]ut the mind of Mr. Rossetti is like a glassy mere, broken only by the dive of some water-bird or the hum of winged insects, and brooded over by an atmosphere of insufferable closeness, with a light blue sky above it, sultry depths mirrored within it, and a surface so thickly sown with water-l...

— Buchanan, Robert (1841–1901)

Date: 1877

"Observing, then, that the emporium or brain itself reflects the entire product of all the senses by an impressible power, which, as by a looking-glass, exactly duplicated the external recognizers, or sense apparatus or limbs, it was inferred that that principle of duplication must be the true an...

— Battye, Richard Fawcett

Date: 1878

"All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces."

— Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)

Date: January, 1884

"From the dawn of an individual consciousness to its close, we find each successive pulse of it capable of mirroring a more and more complex object, into which all the previous pulses may themselves enter as ingredients, and be known."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: January, 1884

"But as the distribution of brain-tension shifts from one relative state of equilibrium to another, like the aurora borealis or the gyrations of a kaleidoscope, now rapid and now slow, is it likely that the brain's faithful psychic concomitant is heavier-footed than itself, that its rate of chang...

— James, William (1842-1910)

Date: 1892

"Somebody observes the Moon through a telescope. I compare the Moon itself to the meaning; it is the object of the observation, mediated by the real image projected by the object glass in the interior of the telescope, and by the retinal image of the observer. The former I compare to the sense, t...

— Frege, Gottlob (1848-1925)