Date: 397-401

"I have spilled and scattered ... my thoughts, the innermost bowels of my soul, are torn apart with the crowding tumults of variety."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

Date: 1657

Fancy is "The roving, pregnant, busie, teeming sence."

— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)

Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1922

"I plucked my soul out of its secret place, / And held it to the mirror of my eye, / To see it like a star against the sky, / A twitching body quivering in space, / A spark of passion shining on my face."

— McKay, Claude (1889-1948)