page 1 of 13     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 420 BC

It does, but not for you. Truth is not in you--for your ears, your mind, your eyes are blind!

— Sophocles (495 BC - 405 BC)

preview | full record

Date: 380-360 B.C.

"[T]here is in every soul an organ or instrument of knowledge that is purified and kindled afresh by such studies when it has been destroyed and blinded by our ordinary pursuits, a faculty whose preservation outweighs ten thousand eyes, for by it only is reality beheld."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

preview | full record

Date: 397-401

"I have spilled and scattered ... my thoughts, the innermost bowels of my soul, are torn apart with the crowding tumults of variety."

— St. Augustine (354-430)

preview | full record

Date: 1257

"Consequently, while original sin is a disease infecting both elements, the personal and the physical - the personal through the will and the physical through the flesh - the stain of original sin is blotted out in the soul, while on the other hand the infection and its consequences remain in the...

— St. Bonaventure [born Giovanni di Fidanza] (1217-1274)

preview | full record

Date: 1611

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

— Anonymous

preview | full record

Date: 1641

"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

preview | full record

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

preview | full record

Date: 1657

Fancy is "The roving, pregnant, busie, teeming sence."

— Poole, Joshua (c.1615–c.1656)

preview | full record

Date: 1664

"The fancy, memory, and judgment are then extended (like so many limbs) upon the rack; all of them reaching with their utmost stress at nature; a thing so almost infinite and boundless, as can never fully be comprehended, but where the images of all things are always present."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

preview | full record

Date: 1682

"Our Passions are nothing else but certain Disallowable Motions of the Mind; Sudden, and Eager; which, by Frequency, and Neglect, turn to a Disease; as a Distillation brings us first to a Cough, and then to a Phthisick."

— L'Estrange, Sir Roger (1616-1704)

preview | full record

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