“Experience is a jewel picked up by a wrecked mariner on a desert coast.”

Portraying wisdom as precious knowledge acquired through disaster · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 46

• Despair
• Memory
• Truth

“How mighty are even momentary influences in early youth.”

Emphasising the lasting power of brief experiences in youth · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 30

• Childhood
• Memory
• Time

“I have always a much better recollection of the emotions that were excited in my mind by hearing a certain air or perusing a particular story than I have of the music or the volume itself.”

Recognising that emotional impressions often outlast their artistic causes · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 26

• Art
• Memory
• Music

“I allude to the marvellous power which the mind possesses during sleep of re-creating the same images over and over with no exercise of memory on the part of the dreamer.”

Reflecting on the mysterious recurrence of imagery in dreams · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 20

• Art
• Memory

“Who are they that can forget their first kiss—the first hand they pressed—the first time they bade their friends farewell?”

Capturing the lasting force of life's earliest emotional moments · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 1

• Friendship
• Love
• Memory

“Our first efforts, it is true, are not always our happiest. Neither are our first loves. Yet both are most dear to our recollections; for with all first things there is associated a certain mysterious magic.”

Linking first attempts and first loves through the enchantment of memory · Essay, A Sixty-Drop Dose of Laudanum, Drop 1

• Art
• Love
• Memory