Date: 1851

"The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: 1855, 1856

"Ah, these currents spin one's head round almost as much as they do the ship."

— Melville, Herman (1819-1891)

Date: August 6 and 20, 1859

"The jaded cart-horse of the commonplace bourgeois mind falters of course in confusion in front of the ditch separating substance from appearance, and cause from effect; but one should not ride carthorses if one intends to go coursing over the very rough ground of abstract reasoning."

— Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895)

Date: 1868

"Over me the billows roll, / Swallow up my sinking soul."

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: April 26 1870

"You'd not believe by what strange roads / Thought travels, when your beauty goads / A man to-night to think of toads."

— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

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)