Date: 1902

"If it were otherwise, no one could even set down on paper a closely reasoned argument, for the attention would be skipping like a stone hurrying down a sharp incline, or it would be moving hither and thither like a helpless shuttlecock at the mercy of eager players."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1919

"HANDS, do what you're bid; / Bring the balloon of the mind / That bellies and drags in the wind / Into its narrow shed."

— Yeats, W. B. (1865-1939)

Date: 1949

"Or, to use another simile, mental processes are 'overheard' by the mind whose processes they are, somewhat as a speaker overhears the words he is himself uttering."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1955, 1958

"It [the title of this book] is used out of context but expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them---as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul."

— Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. (b. 1919)

Date: 1978, 1979

"The mind is like the untrained elephant. When it is bound with the cord of mindfulness to the firm post of the previously discussed meditative object, [even] if it is unwilling to remain there, it is gradually brought under control, goaded by the hook of awareness."

— Wayman, Alex

Date: 1992

"Even more important to David than the very natural worry that his wife and his son might grow fond of one another was the intoxicating feeling that he had a blank consciousness to work with, and it gave him great pleasure to knead this yielding clay with his artistic thumbs."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"After a while, he no longer recognized what he was thinking and, just as a shop window sometimes prevents the onlooker from seeing the objects behind the glass and folds him instead in a narcissistic embrace, his mind ignored the flow of impressions from the outside world and locked him into a d...

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"But his mind was eclipsed by the shadow of his father's presence."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"Tightening his fists and concentrating until his concentration was like a telephone wire stretched between them, Patrick disappeared into the lizard's body."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 1992

"When Victor sat down again he pictured himself thinking, and tried to superimpose this picture on his inner vacancy."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)