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Date: 1656

"It is impossible, Lady, except you should alter the Fabrick of his mind, unbend its appetite, or give it new desires; for as long as the divine soul creating breath, is clad with different disposing matter, and cast in several moulds, there will be Wise and Fooles."

— Anonymous

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Date: 1704

"From thence the Taylor and the Parson join'd, / To cloath his naked Body and his Mind; / The Taylor only form'd the outward Sign, / To shew what sort of Creature liv'd within; / The Priest amaz'd him in his Mystick School, / Turn'd his Head round, and made him Knave and Fool."

— Anonymous

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Date: 1713

"The Stoical Scheme of Supplying our Wants by lopping off our Desires, is like cutting off our Feet when we want Shoes."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: 1720

"Severity makes more Hypocrites than any Sort of Discipline; streight lacing the Body may make us good Shapes, but there's no streight lacing our Minds."

— Shadwell, Charles (fl. 1692-1720)

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Date: 1742

"A night that glooms us in the noon-tide ray, / And wraps our thought, at banquets, in the shroud."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: August 12, 1738, to Nov. 1, 1739 [1748]

"Therefore the Eyes of my Understanding are not yet open'd, but the Old Veil is still upon my Heart."

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

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Date: 1755

"Those would seem Gentlemen! who strut the Mall, / In Waistcoats lac'd on Sundays--troll about, / Leaving their Minds undrest--all Show without."

— Arnold, Cornelius (b. 1714, d. in or after 1758)

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Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"We should find her, if any sensible defect appeared in the mind, more careful in rectifying it, than plaistering up the irreparable decays of the person; nay, I am even apt to fancy, that ladies would find more real pleasure in this utensil in private, than in any other bauble imported from Chin...

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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Date: 1790

"All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

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