Date: 1949

"Rather, to relapse perforce into simile, it is supposed that mental processes are phosphorescent, like tropical sea-water, which makes itself visible by the light which it itself emits."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"Or, to use another simile, mental processes are 'overheard' by the mind whose processes they are, somewhat as a speaker overhears the words he is himself uttering."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: March 17, 1950 [2005]

"One of those involuntary revealing thoughts one surprises, running like a rat through the muck-heap of my mind: Maybe I'll be able to afford that ikon if he goes."

— Friend, Donald (1915-1989)

Date: 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951

"It is certainly not then--not in dreams--but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle tower."

— Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977)

Date: 1952

De la partie la plus noire de mon âme, à travers la zone hachurée me monte ce désir d'être tout à coup blanc [Out of the blackest part of my soul, through the zone of hachures, surges up this desire to be suddenly white].

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1952

La structure néurotique d'un individu sear justement l'élaboration, la formation, l'éclosion dans le moi de noeuds conflictuels provenant d'une part du milieu, d'autre part de la façon toute personelle dont cet individu réagit à ces influences [The neurotic structure of an individual is precisely...

— Fanon, Frantz (1925-1961)

Date: 1954

"The furniture of our minds consists of what we hear, read, observe, discuss and think each day."

— Watson, Thomas J. (1874-1956)

Date: 1956

"All the old people I know have had their minds locked up like grey, scaly oysters since they were in their teens."

— Durrell, Gerald (1925-1995)

Date: September, 1956

Je veux saisir les choses avec l'esprit comme le pénis est saisi par le vagin. [I want to grasp things with the mind the way the penis is grasped by the vagina.]

— Duchamp, Marcel (1887-1968)

Date: 1957

"This direction, of course, is towards the delineation of the domestic life and the private experience of the characters who belong to it: the two go together--we get inside their minds as well as inside their houses."

— Watt, Ian (1917-1999)