"HUMAN thoughts are like the planetary system, where many are fixed, and many wander, and many continue for ever unintelligible; or rather like meteors, which generally lose their substance with their lustre."
— Anonymous
Author
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for Scatcherd and Whitaker, Ave Maria-Lane; J. Sewell, Cornhill; and J. Debrett, Piccadilly
Date
October, 1784
Metaphor
"HUMAN thoughts are like the planetary system, where many are fixed, and many wander, and many continue for ever unintelligible; or rather like meteors, which generally lose their substance with their lustre."
Metaphor in Context
HUMAN thoughts are like the planetary system, where many are fixed, and many wander, and many continue for ever unintelligible; or rather like meteors, which generally lose their substance with their lustre.
I. The understanding is like the sun, which gives light and life to the whole intellectual world; but the memory, regarding those things only that are past, is like the moon, which is new and full and has her wane by turns.
II. The world is a sea, and life and death are its ebbing and flowing. Wars are the storms which agitate and toss it into fury and faction. The tongues of its enraged inhabitants are then as the noise of many waters. Peace is the calm which succeeds the tempest, and hushes the billows of interest and passion to rest. Prosperity is the sun whose beams produce plenty and comfort. Adversity is a portentous cloud impregnated with discontent, and often bursts in a torrent of desolation and destruction.
(p. 316)
I. The understanding is like the sun, which gives light and life to the whole intellectual world; but the memory, regarding those things only that are past, is like the moon, which is new and full and has her wane by turns.
II. The world is a sea, and life and death are its ebbing and flowing. Wars are the storms which agitate and toss it into fury and faction. The tongues of its enraged inhabitants are then as the noise of many waters. Peace is the calm which succeeds the tempest, and hushes the billows of interest and passion to rest. Prosperity is the sun whose beams produce plenty and comfort. Adversity is a portentous cloud impregnated with discontent, and often bursts in a torrent of desolation and destruction.
(p. 316)
Provenance
Searching "the mind is a" in Google Books
Citation
Anonymous, "A Dozen of Allegories," The European Magazine and London Review (London: Scatcherd and Whitaker, 1784): 316. <Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
04/16/2011
