Date: 1850

"My mind was at that time / A parti-coloured show of grave and gay, / Solid and light, short-sighted and profound; / Of inconsiderate habits and sedate, / Consorting in one mansion unreproved. "

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1850

"Why, gifted with such powers to send abroad / Her spirit, must it lodge in shrines so frail?"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1851

"No, but put a sky-light on top of his head to illuminate inwards."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1851

"But, in reading, our head is, however, really only the arena of some one else’s thoughts."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has not been worked out in one’s own mind, is of less value than a much smaller amount that has been fully considered."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1854

"The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as its...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obdura...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1857

"I ask'd to see what things the hollow brain / Behind environed: what high tragedy / In the dark secret chambers of her skull / Was acting"

— Keats, John (1795-1821)