Date: 1604

"For, as the Ratte running behinde a paynted cloth, betrayeth her selfe; even so, a Passion lurking in the heart, by thoughts and speech discovereth it selfe, according to the common Proverbe, ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, from the aboundance of heart, the tongue speaketh: for as a Riv...

— Wright, Thomas (c. 1561-1623)

Date: 1741

"Whatsoever, saith he, old Time with his huge Drag-Net, has convey'd down to us along the Stream of Ages, whether it be Shells or Shell-Fish, Jewels or Pebbles, Sticks or Straws, Sea-Weeds or Mud, these are the Ancients, these are the Fathers. The Case is much the same with the memorial Possessio...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"So for Instance, in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an Hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them: All the Traces, Forms or Images which are drawn there, are immediately effaced or closed...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1902

"Those traits which float like foam on the surface of a man's being should be put in this category."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1949

"The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"True, the evidence adduced recently by Freud seems to show that there exist channels tributary to this stream, which run hidden from their owner."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"Rather, to relapse perforce into simile, it is supposed that mental processes are phosphorescent, like tropical sea-water, which makes itself visible by the light which it itself emits."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Perhaps the consciousness of dreaming is the almost random formation of little groups forming in different configurations like pebbles thrown very gently into the water. One can imagine the gentle ripples easily being displaced by the next pebble as it hits the water."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: February 21, 2019

"It was a place where she knew what was going to happen, a place where she would always choose the right side, where the failure was in history and not in herself, where she did not read the wrong writers, was not seized with surges of enthusiasm for the wrong leaders, did not eat the wrong anima...

— Lockwood, Patricia