I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom.

Wretched un-idea'd girls.

Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away,and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

The most Heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.

As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.