
“If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.”
Source: Match Me If You Can
Source: River Marked
“If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.”
Source: Match Me If You Can
“It hadn't even occured to me that somebody would believe mine.”
Source: Just Listen
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 79
Variant: I was taught that I should see mine own sin, and not other men’s sin except it may be for comfort and help of my fellow-Christians.
Context: In that He shewed me that I should sin, I took it nakedly to mine own singular person, for I was none otherwise shewed at that time. But by the high, gracious comfort of our Lord that followed after, I saw that His meaning was for the general Man: that is to say, All-Man; which is sinful and shall be unto the last day. Of which Man I am a member, as I hope, by the mercy of God. For the blessed comfort that I saw, it is large enough for us all. And here was I learned that I should see mine own sin, and not other men’s sins but if it may be for comfort and help of mine even-Christians.
Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 157
Catherine Linton (Ch. XXIV).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness — mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool dusky dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive, and he said mine would be drunk; I said I should fall asleep in his, and he said he could not breathe in mine.
Regarding John Brown, address at the 14th anniversary of Storer College http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/bbspr05-0032.html (30 May 1881)
1880s, Address at the Anniversary of Storer College (1881)
“Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take…”
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987)
Context: No use to fall down on my knees
and beg for mercy's sake.
Nothing I counted mine, out of my life,
is mine to take...
1810s
Source: Selected Writings
Context: It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Letter to Isaac McPherson http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html (13 August 1813) ME 13:333.
The sentence He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. is sometimes paraphrased as "Knowledge is like a candle. Even as it lights a new candle, the strength of the original flame is not diminished."