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)

Date: 1887

"It is a mistake to think that that little room [the 'brain-attic'] has elastic walls and can distend to any extent"

— Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Date: 1888

"I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul."

— Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903)

Date: 1888

"It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate: / I am the captain of my soul."

— Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903)

Date: January, 1888

"The past is all of one texture--whether feigned or suffered--whether acted out in three dimensions, or only witnessed in that small theatre of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long, after the jets are down, and darkness and sleep reign undisturbed in the remainder of the body."

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Date: January, 1888

"So that the little people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who should have slipped into the house and found it empty, rather than like drilled actors performing a set piece to a huge hall of faces."

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Date: January, 1888

"For myself--what I call I, my conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland unless he has changed his residence since Descartes, the man with the conscience and the variable bank-account, the man with the hat and the boots, and the privilege of voting and not carrying his candidate at the gener...

— Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)

Date: 1889

"The story is a fiction, -- the coinage of the brain, -- the book a reality."

— Hare, John Innes Clark (1816-1905)