Date: 1654

"The eyes and the ears are the inlets or doors of the soul, through which innumerable objects enter."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: 1654

"The certainty that that time will come, together with the uncertainty, how, where, and when, should make us so to number our days to apply our hearts to wisdom, that when we are put out of these houses of clay we may be sure of an everlasting habitation that fades not away."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: 1787

"Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them, which grow up, and through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies among themselves, and generate a multitude, seize the citadel or the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1811

"But the temple of human nature has two great apartments: the intellectual and the moral."

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1811

"If there is not a mutual friendship and strict alliance between these [two apartments], degradation to the whole building must be the consequence."

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1829

"And if the man is as complete without the body, as he is without the house he resides in, the immortal soul ought to be thankful when it gets quit of the body."

— Balfour, Walter (1776-1852)

Date: 1893

A woman's nature "is like a great house full of rooms ... and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."

— Wharton, Edith (1862-1937)

Date: 1954

"The furniture of our minds consists of what we hear, read, observe, discuss and think each day."

— Watson, Thomas J. (1874-1956)

Date: 1966, 1968

"Otherwise they [the people we used to be] turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."

— Didion, Joan (b. 1934)

Date: 1968

"There is a little man who lives in one's head. The little man keeps a library."

— Fodor, Jerry (b. 1935)