Date: December 1790

"A few fundamental truths meet the first enquiry of reason, and appear as clear to an unwarped mind, as that air and bread are necessary to enable the body to fulfil its vital functions; but the opinions which men discuss with so much heat must be simplified and brought back to first principles; ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1791, 1806

"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1797, 1806

"While shadows, blanks to reason's orb, / In dread succession haunt the brain"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1814

"They have injured the finest mind!--for sometimes, Fanny, I own to you, it does appear more than manner; it appears as if the mind itself was tainted."

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

Date: 1860

"Although when Mr Wakem entered his office that morning, he had had no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made up: Mrs Tulliver had suggested to him several determining motives, and his mental glance was very rapid: he was one of those men who can be prompt without being ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: September, 1934

"This weight of knowledge dark on the brain is never / To be burnt out like fever, // But will slowly, with speech to tell the way and ease it, / Will sink into the blood, and warm, and slowly / Move in the veins, and murmur, and come at length / To the tongue's tip and the finger's tip most lowl...

— Miles, Josephine (1911-1985)

Date: 2011

"There will be such an awful beauty in your heart. A wound like a seal upon it."

— Nadzam, Bonnie

Date: 2015

"She knew Lee well, and by heading southeast, she had hidden in the folds of his own cerebral cortex."

— Zink, Nell (b. 1964)

Date: February 21, 2019

"I cared about the feeling that my thoughts were being dictated. I cared about the collective head, which seemed to be running a fever. But if we managed to escape, to break out of the great skull and into the fresh air, if Twitter was shut down for crimes against humanity, what would we be losing?"

— Lockwood, Patricia