Date: 1760-7

"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Thus, as a bark on every side beset with storms, enjoys a state of rest, so does the mind, when influenced by a just equipoise of the passions, enjoy tranquility"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1772

"Thus, female Minds, with Knowlege fraught, / Are just and liberal Notions taught; / Through Wisdom's Glass their Foibles view'd, / Stand self-convicted, and subdued: / No more Caprice their Conduct rules; / No more the Prey of Rakes, and Fools; / Their Souls, with Truth and Honour charm'd, / Are...

— Whyte, Samuel (1733-1811)

Date: 1773

"But was it made for nothing else beside / Passions to draw, and Reason to be Guide? / Was so much Art employ'd to drag and drive / Nothing within the Vehicle alive? / No seated Mind that claims the moving Pew, / Master of Passions, and of Reason too?"

— Byrom, John (1692-1763)

Date: 1788

"Our mind's unhelm'd, our attributes decay--"

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"So poignant a mind in a vulgariz'd shell,/ Resembles a bucket of gold in a well; / 'Tis like Ceylon's best spice in a rude-fashion'd jar, / Or Comedy coop'd in a Dutch man of war."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1964

"Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, to turn waste into need, and destruction into construction, the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. ...

— Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979)

Date: 1992

" He was dangerously obsessed, dangerously obsessed. And his thoughts, like a bobsleigh walled with ice, would not change their course until he had crashed or achieved his end."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2007

"I have a brain full of remembered names but the road is often blocked with rubble."

— Engel, Howard (b. 1931)

Date: May 16, 2014

"It was like jump-starting a car, connecting little bits of her brain that fire every system at once."

— Cohen, Joanna