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The phrase one’s heart rules one’s head, and its variants, mean: one is governed by one’s feelings rather than by rational or practical considerations.
Similarly, the phrase to let one’s heart rule one’s head, and its variants, mean: to be governed by one’s feelings rather than by rational or practical considerations.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of those phrases that I have found:
1-: From English Poetry. Chapter III. §V., by Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816-1850), a lawyer and poet from Virginia, published in the Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond, Virginia, USA) of January 1836 [page 105, column 1]—Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an English poet who committed suicide:
I have little or no more to say of Thomas Chatterton; I have already said too much. But the heart rules the head when we look upon the wretched career—least wretched in its wretched end—of one fitted for the loftiest achievements. A rocket with “the wide sky” before it—the blaze and the flight of his genius was scarcely beyond the fogs that lie near earth. It fell, blackened, and scorched, and lightless, to the dust. Had “the marvellous boy” feared death more than he had been taught to fear life, the rocket would have been in “the wide sky,” not in the dust—the wonder of men, not their pity.
Thomas Chatterton died in 1770, aged seventeen years and nine months.
2-: From a transcript of the remarks that Henry R. Crosbie made on the prohibitory liquor law on Monday 24th April 1854 during the first session of the Washington Territorial Legislature—transcript published in the Pioneer and Democrat (Olympia, Washington, USA) of Saturday 29th April 1854 [page 2, column 5]:
Where morality seems to be concerned, feelings always govern instead of judgement—heart rules the head.
3-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Anne M. O’K.’, published in The Waterford Citizen, and Commercial Record (Waterford, County Waterford, Ireland) of Friday 15th August 1862 [page 2, column 7]:
I’d wager my best bonnet that if the idol of his soul, his beloved Juliet, became repentent [sic], and recalled to life and love and hope her banished, mourning Romeo, he would respond joyously to the call, become gay and good-natured again, and for ever drown his ascerbity [sic] in enjoyment of present bliss and in visions of forthcoming. It is with him, as with others, where love exists, the heart rules the head.
4-: From an obituary of the Rev. D. V. Thomson, of Kilmarnock, published in The Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of Monday 22nd January 1866 [page 2, column 4]—reprinted from The Ayrshire Express (Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland):
His generosity was free and spontaneous; his heart ruled his head, and he could hardly say “no” to any one who asked a favour from him.
5-: From Mental and Muscular Musicians, published in The Manchester Courier. And Lancashire General Advertiser (Manchester, Lancashire, England) of Wednesday 21st April 1869 [page 3, column 6]—reprinted from The Orchestra:
Musicians, whether players or composers, may be broadly divided into two classes—those who work with their fingers without that heaven-given supremacy the imagination, and those who by the minute net-work the surgeon terms nerves make the fingers the expression of the inspired mind. The one counts with his fingers; with the other the heart rules the head, and the hands give expression to both. The motive nerves, the sources of muscular action, suffice for the one; with the other the brain nerves command the outgoings of thought—the extremities of the hands.
6-: From Perdita; Or, Fair and False, by ‘Fairfax Balfour’ (i.e. the English author and illustrator Watts Phillips – 1825-1874), published in The London Journal: And Weekly Record of Literature, Science, and Art (London, England) of 1st January 1870 [chapter 51, page 8, column 1]:
“Where a woman is concerned you are bound to be doubly careful. Their hearts rule their heads too often, and a caprice will lead them to sacrifice themselves, and everybody else, which is worse.”
