Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"In the beginning of dinner, the party being small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on her."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"A man's mind---what there is of it---has always the advantage of being masculine,---as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,---and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"If it had really occurred to Mr Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of her own experience to him, and had understood from him the scope of his great work, also of attrac...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1887

"You see, he explained, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1887

"Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic."

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)