text,updated_at,metaphor,created_at,context,theme,reviewed_on,dictionary,comments,provenance,id,work_id
"COL.
My Genius fain wou'd Court superiour Blessings; those Passions are too hurrying to last; Vapours that start from a Mercurial Brain, whose wild Chimera's flush the lighter Faculties, which tir'd i'th' vain pursuit of fancy'd Pleasures; a Passion more substantial Courts our Reason, solid, persuasive, elegant, sublime, where ev'ry Sense crowds to the luscious Banquet, and ev'ry nobler Faculty's imploy'd.
L.ROD.
That Passion you describe's a sleeping Potion, a lazy, stupid, lethargy of Mind, that nums our Faculties, destroys our Reason, and to our Sex the bane of all Agreements; shou'd I whom Fortune, lavish of her store, has given the means to glut insatiate Wishes, out-vie my Sex, and Lord it o'er Mankind, constrain my rambling Pleasures, check my Liberty for an insipid Cooing sort of Life, which marry'd Fools think Heav'n, and cheat each other.
COL.
Are Love and Pleasure, Madam, so incongruous?-- Methinks the very name of Love exhilerates; meaner delights were meant but to persuade us, Toys to provoke and heighten our desires, which Love confirms and Crowns with mightier extasie.
L. ROD.
Rather all Joys expire, where Love commences; when that deluding Passion once takes root, we grow insensible, ill-bred, intollerable, neglecting Dress and Air, and Conversation, to fondle an odd Wretch, that caus'd our ruin: No, give me the outward Gallantries of Love, the Poetry, the Balls, the Serenades, where I may Laugh and Toy, and humour Apish Cringers, with secret Pride to raise my Sexes Envy, and lead pretending Fops a Faiery Dance.",2009-12-12 17:40:23 UTC,"""Passions are too hurrying to last; Vapours that start from a Mercurial Brain, whose wild Chimera's flush the lighter Faculties, which tir'd i'th' vain pursuit of fancy'd Pleasures.""",2004-11-10 00:00:00 UTC,"Act III, scene iii","",,"","•First performed 14 Dec 1708
•Literal vapours? Vapors are an interesting problem. How to treat them?",Searching in HDIS (Drama),10547,4096
"We proceed now to explain, by the structure of the brain, the several modes of thinking. It is well known to anatomists that the brain is a congeries of glands that separate the finer parts of the blood, called animal spirits; that a gland is nothing but a canal of a greater length, variously intorted and wound up together. From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different sorts of thought. Simple ideas are produced by the motion of the spirits in one simple canal. When two of these canals disembogue themselves into one, they make what we call a proposition; and when two of these propositional channels empty themselves into a third, they form a syllogism, or a ratiocination.
Memory is performed in a distinct apartment of the brain, made up of vessels similar, and like situated to the ideal, propositional and syllogistical vessels, in the primary part of the brain. After the same manner it is easy to explain the other modes of thinking; as also why some people think so wrong and perversely, which proceeds from the bad configuration of those glands. Some, for example, are born without the propositional or syllogistical canals; in others that reason ill, they are of unequal capacities; in dull fellows, of too great a length, whereby the motion of the spirits is retarded; in trifling geniuses weak and small; in the over-refining spirits, too much intorted and winding; and so of the rest.
We are so much persuaded of the truth of this our hypothesis that we have employed one of our members, a great virtuoso at Nuremberg, to make a sort of an hydraulic engine, in which a chemical liquor resembling blood is driven through elastic channels resembling arteries and veins by the force of an embolus like the heart, and wrought by a pneumatic machine of the nature of the lungs, with ropes and pullies, like the nerves, tendons and muscles. And we are persuaded that this our artificial man will not only walk and speak, and perform most of the outward actions of animal life, but (being wound up once a week) will perhaps reason as well as most of your country parsons.
(XII, pp. 63-4)",2013-11-01 20:36:10 UTC,"""From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different sorts of thought.""",2004-05-18 00:00:00 UTC,Chapter XII. Letter from Freethinkers,Materialism,2011-04-26,Animals,"•A hydraulic account of thinking. INTEREST.
• arietation: ""The action of butting like a ram; hence, the striking with a battering-ram or similar instrument."" (OED)",Reading,12380,4687
"And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good will of the lover; he recognizes that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love for love lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished.
(255e-256c)",2012-02-29 19:13:39 UTC,"""And when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love.""",2012-02-29 19:13:39 UTC,"","",,"","",Reading,19607,7195
"Malice, and Lust, voracious Birds of Prey,
That out-soar Reason, and our Wishes sway;
Desires' wild Seas, on which the wise are tost,
By Pilot Indolence, are safely crost.
Hush'd in soft Rest, they quiet Captives lie,
And, wanting Nourishment, grow faint and die.
By Thee, O sacred Indolence, the Sons
Of honest Levi, loll, like lazy Drones:
While tatter'd Hirelings drudge, in saying Pray'r,
Thou tak'st sleek Doctors to thy downy Care.
Well dost thou help, to form the double Chin,
Dilate the Paunch, and raise the reverend Mien.
By Thee, with stoln Discourses they are pleas'd,
That we, with worse, may not be dully teez'd:
A Happiness! that Laymen ought to prize,
Who value Time, and wou'd be counted wise.",2012-04-29 23:55:23 UTC,"""Malice, and Lust, voracious Birds of Prey, / That out-soar Reason, and our Wishes sway; / Desires' wild Seas, on which the wise are tost, / By Pilot Indolence, are safely crost.""",2012-04-29 23:55:23 UTC,"","",,Beasts and Inhabitants,"","Searching ""reason"" and ""bird"" in HDIS (Poetry)",19746,4498
"And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.
All men think all men mortal but themselves;
Themselves, when some alarming shock of Fate
Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread.
But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found.
As from the wing no scar the sky retains,
The parted wave no furrow from the keel,
So dies in human hearts the thought of death.
E'en with the tender tear which Nature sheds
O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
Can I forget Philander? That were strange.
O my full heart!--But should I give it vent,
The longest night, though longer far, would fail,
And the lark listen to my midnight song.
(ll. 423-437, pp. 47-8 in CUP edition)",2013-06-11 14:45:55 UTC,"""But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, / Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found. / As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel, / So dies in human hearts the thought of death.""",2013-06-05 19:54:37 UTC,Night the First,"",,Animals,"",Reading,20396,7399
"But alas, I had not been sixty minutes Alphabetizing and sorting of Books before my old Rambling Maggot began to crawl and bite afresh; upon which I immediately grew as fickle and wavering as if I had drank Liquor distill'd from a Womans Brains; and nothing would satisfie me now till I saw the Situation of my Father's House again. 'Tis true, my Master did advise me (for which I'll pay and ever owe him as many Thanks as Arithmetick can count) to beg my Father's Consent before I rambled again; but my runnagate Mind being set on a galloping Frollick, he might with as much ease have found out the Quadrature of a Circle, or the Taylor's Name that works to the Man in the Moon, as have parted me from another Ramble; for beginning now to imagin that a Trade was troublesom, and that the toyl of keeping Accompts would be a labour too tedious for my Mercurial Brains, I was impatient till I was on another Ramble. And no sooner had the Night began to draw its Curtains, but Evander draws his.
(III, pp. 34-5)",2013-06-19 02:10:20 UTC,"""But alas, I had not been sixty minutes Alphabetizing and sorting of Books before my old Rambling Maggot began to crawl and bite afresh; upon which I immediately grew as fickle and wavering as if I had drank Liquor distill'd from a Womans Brains; and nothing would satisfie me now till I saw the Situation of my Father's House again.""",2013-06-19 02:10:00 UTC,"","",,Animals,"",C-H Lion,20996,7476
"SIGISMUNDA.
O may the Furies light his Nuptial Torch!
Be it accurs'd as mine! For the fair Peace,
The tender Joys of Hymeneal Love,
May Jealousy awak'd, and fell Remorse,
Pour all their fiercest Venom thro' his Breast!--
Where the Fates lead, and blind Revenge, I follow!--
Let me not think--By injur'd Love! I vow,
Thou shalt, base Prince! perfidious and inhuman!
Thou shalt behold me in another's Arms!
In his thou hatest! Osmond's!
(III.iii)",2013-06-28 14:49:22 UTC,"""For the fair Peace, / The tender Joys of Hymeneal Love, / May Jealousy awak'd, and fell Remorse, / Pour all their fiercest Venom thro' his Breast!""",2013-06-28 14:49:22 UTC,"Act III, scene iii","",,Animals,"",C-H Lion,21251,7490
"SIR WILL.
Ah!--A Fair Riddance; how I bless my self, that it was not in this Fools power to provoke me beyond that Serenity of Temper, which a wise man ought to be Master of: How near are men to Brutes, when their unruly Passions break the Bounds of Reason? And of all Passions, Anger is the most violent, which often puts me in mind of that admirable Saying,
He that strives not to Stem his Angers Tide,
Does a Mad Horse without a Bridle ride.