Date: April, 1871

"There are, it is true, some minds which a mathematician might describe as minds of 'contrary flexure,' whose particular bent it is to contradict what those around them say."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"And in violent cases of mania, where the mind is shut up within itself, and cannot, from impotence, perceive what is without, it is as sure of the most chance fancy, as in health it would be of the best proved truths."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"They are all from various causes "adhesive" states--states which it is very difficult to get rid of, and which, in consequence, have retained their power of creating belief in the mind, when other states, which once possessed it too, have quite lost it."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"Constantly impressed ideas are brought back by the world around us, and if they are so often, get so tied to our other ideas that we can hardly wrench them away."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"Interesting ideas stick in the mind by the associations which give them interest."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"When the inability to prevent the recurrence of the idea is very great, so that the reason is powerless on the mind, the consequent "conviction" is an eager, irritable, and ungovernable passion."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"But when the conviction of any error is a strong passion, it leaves, like all other passions, a permanent mark on the mind."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"Dry minds, which give an intellectual 'assent' to conclusions which feel no strong glow of faith in them, often do not know what their opinions are."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: April, 1871

"His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, came to him probably in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument floating here and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, still less did they create it, and they ...

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: 1872

"No! the celestial Author and Creator / In those two volumes of the Book of Nature / Ordained for our instruction, represents, / By multiform but single elements, / One universe of sense, all that we know, / The visible world of instantaneous show / And tangible creation, hard and slow,The last r...

— Frere, John Hookham (1769-1846)