Date: 1942

"It has to be on that stage / And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and / With meditation, speak words that in the ear, / In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat, / Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound / Of which, an invisible audience listens, / Not to the play, but to itself, ex...

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)

Date: May 27, 1943

"And, once they [the truths] have been digested and have entered into the apparatus of the mind, it is possible for most people to move fairly safely over a terrain otherwise most dangerous."

— Keynes, John Maynard (1883-1946)

Date: w. 1943, 1944

"The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only be reading old books."

— Lewis, C. S. (1898-1963)

Date: 1944; 2018

"My desk is the monument to my mind, and by the appearance of it, my mind must have intimate contact with garbage collectors."

— O'Connor, Flannery (1925-1964)

Date: 1944; 2018

"It is pleasanter to be five years older and beautiful than status quo and under par, but I must force my loose mind into its overalls and get going."

— O'Connor, Flannery (1925-1964)

Date: 1945

"The mob within the heart / Police cannot suppress / The riot given at the first / Is authorized as peace."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1946

"At their best, they erect a grammatical artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges and recesses, decorate the main structure."

— Gerth, Hans H. (1908-1978) and C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)

Date: 1946

"Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible) / to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)

Date: 1946

"his brain appears, throned in "fantastic triumph," / and shines through his hat / with jeweled works at work at intermeshing crowns, / lamé with lights."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)

Date: 1946

"Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie / his rushing brain."

— Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979)