Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: c. 1862

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes -- / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -- / The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,' / And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'?"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: September 5, 2011

"He [Derek Parfit] pictures his thinking self as a government minister sitting behind a large desk, who writes a question on a piece of paper and puts it in his out-tray. The minister then sits idly at the desk, twiddling his thumbs, while in some back room civil servants labor furiously, come up...

— MacFarquhar, Larissa

Date: August 27, 2016

"Think of the brain as a jam-packed sports arena and the voxels as all the fans"

— Murphy, Kate

Date: 2024

"I wish I could explain to him that I don't want to think about her any more, but thinking about her is not a choice; that--even though Jen is no longer in my physical life--the room inside my mind that has been occupied by her for the last four years still exists. I want to convert it to a home ...

— Dolly Alderton (b. 1988)