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Date: 1785

"I tread his deck, / Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes / Discover countries, with a kindred heart / Suffer his woes and share in his escapes, / While fancy, like the finger of a clock, / Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1786

"Dismiss their cares when they dismiss their flock, / Machines themselves, and govern'd by a clock."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1788

"With horns, and tail, and hoofs that make folks start; / And in my breast a millstone for a heart!"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: 1789

"Hope and fear are the two grand springs by which that curious machine, the human mind, is actuated; and to deprive Virtue of that support which she receives from their influence and operation, and to substitute in their room a sense of honour, or a love of moral beauty and order, is to betray th...

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)

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Date: 1793

"It was from a view of this truth that the poets derived their fictions respecting the early history of mankind; well aware that, when luxury was introduced and the springs of mind unbent, it would be a vain expectation that should hope to recal men from passion to reason, and from effeminacy to ...

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

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Date: 1793

"Human nature, like a vast machine, is not to be understood by looking on its superficies, but by dwelling on its minute springs and little wheels."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

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Date: 1795

"Still to be serious, Pitt, before we part: / Let Mercy melt the mill-stone of thy heart."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: 1800

"Piece of the nether millstone is his heart / Who marks ill-pleas'd the frolic of the child, / Or views the rural festival unmov'd."

— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)

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Date: w. 1797-1807, published 1893

"So shall [you] govern over all let Moral Duty tune your tongue*But be your hearts harder than the nether millstone"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.