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Date: 1600

"The painter plays the spider, and hath woven / A golden mesh t' untrap the hearts of men / Faster than gnats in cobwebs."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1600

"[F]or in companions / That do converse and waste the time together, / Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love, / There must be needs a like proportion / Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1600

"Grant him there; there seen, / Heave him away upon your wingèd thoughts / Athwart the sea."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1600

"For your own reasons turn into your bosoms, / As dogs upon their masters, worrying you."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1600

"Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith / To hold opinion with Pythagoras / That souls of animals infuse themselves / Into the trunks of men."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1603

"There's something in his soul / O'er which his melancholy sits on brood, / And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose / Will be some danger."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1603

"O wretched state, O bosom black as death, / O limèd soul that, struggling to be free, / Art more engaged!"

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1603

"Haste, haste me to know it, that with wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love / May sweep to my revenge."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1603

"Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your / dull ass will not mend his pace with beating."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1664

"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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