Date: 1871-2, 1874

"A man's mind---what there is of it---has always the advantage of being masculine,---as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,---and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"If it had really occurred to Mr Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: August-November, 1871

"[B]ut the mind of Mr. Rossetti is like a glassy mere, broken only by the dive of some water-bird or the hum of winged insects, and brooded over by an atmosphere of insufferable closeness, with a light blue sky above it, sultry depths mirrored within it, and a surface so thickly sown with water-l...

— Buchanan, Robert (1841–1901)

Date: 1891

"So those high orthodoxies came to be / Quick seeds in me of heterodox opinion, / And, ere I wist, my thoughts were all at sea, / And drifted, holden by no wise dominion."

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

Date: 1900

"And hearts responsive to the sound / Insidious, of persuasive sin, / Must carry, like the garden-ground, / A welcome for what grows therein."

— Money-Coutts, Francis Burdett Thomas, 5th Lord Latimer (1852-1923)

Date: 1900

"Sow not emotion; 'tis a weed / That grows in hedge-row"

— Money-Coutts, Francis Burdett Thomas, 5th Lord Latimer (1852-1923)

Date: 1900

"But rare Imagination, caught / Like seed-down from the breezes, sow / In the world's garden"

— Money-Coutts, Francis Burdett Thomas, 5th Lord Latimer (1852-1923)

Date: 1912

"Could we deftly lift the curtain / Which the cunning serpent draws, / Like the veil of night about us, / We would find that paradise, / Like a flower in winter, lies / 'Neath the stubbles of our souls."

— Beadle, Samuel Alfred (1857-1932)

Date: 1912

"Who does not harbor in his breast / The fruitage of forbidden things / Culled from beauty's lips and heart, / And folded in between the leaves / Of memory's roll of reveries."

— Beadle, Samuel Alfred (1857-1932)

Date: December, 1917

"I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds."

— Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955)