Date: 1706

"Let us make a Trial, Whether they that have been Scorched and Blacken'd by the Sun of Africa, may not come to have their Minds Healed by the more Benign Beams of the Sun of Righteousness."

— Mather, Cotton (1663-1728)

Date: August 31, 1837

"But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such, — watching days and months, sometimes, for a few facts; correcting still his old records; — must relinquish display and immediate fame."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: 1845

"Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1937

"Yes, the gadget mind is useful in its place; it can do many things. But the spiritual mind, God-illumined, is the hope of the race."

— Newton, Joseph Fort (1876-1950)

Date: 1941, 1942

"I think that his [the poet's] function is to make his imagination theirs and that he fulfills himself only as he sees his imagination become the light in the minds of others."

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)

Date: 1958

"I believe it was your colleague Hospers who proposed this useful figure: that whereas both thoughts and words have meaning, just as both the sun and moon send light to us, the meaning of the words is related to the meaning of the thoughts just as the light of the moon is related to that of the s...

— Chisholm, Roderick (1916-1999)

Date: 2001

"It is as substantial or insubstantial as the shadow of a house, in which some things will grow, some not."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)