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Date: c. 1603

"Just when the human mind, borne thither by some favouring gale, had found rest in a little truth, this man presumed to cast the closest fetters on our understandings."

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

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Date: w. 1610-11, 1623

"The charm dissolves apace, / And as the morning steals upon the night, / Melting the darkness, so their rising senses / Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle / Their clearer reason."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1612-3, 1623

"The hearts of princes kiss obedience,
So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits
They swell, and grow as terrible as storms."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1615

"Go too then, is not he said to know himself, who can tell how to temper and order the state and condition of his mind, how to appease those civil tumults within himself, by the storms and waves whereof he is pitifully tossed, and how to suppress and appease those varieties of passions wherewith ...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

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Date: 1620

"Lastly, knowing how much the sight of man's mind is distracted by experience and history, and how hard it is at the first (especially for minds either tender or preoccupied) to become familiar with nature, I not unfrequently subjoin observations of my own, being as the first offers, inclinations...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

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Date: 1641

The self may be imagined as a "pure, transparent, rarefied substance like a wind."

— Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655)

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Date: 1641

The common view is that the mind is like "a wind or similar body"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1649

"I see it a bad exchange to wound a mans owne Conscience, thereby to salve State sores; to calme the stormes of popular discontents, by stirring up a tempest in a mans owne bosome."

— Charles I (1600-1649); Gauden, John (1605-1662)

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Date: 1653

"Thoughts are for Shadowes plac'd, / By which the lighter Fancies are more graced. / As through a dark, and watry Cloud, more bright, / The Sun breakes forth with his Resplendent Light. / Or like to Night's black Mantle, where each Star / Doth clearer seem, so lighter Fancies are."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)

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Date: 1659

"When the minde is in a calme, our advice may saile over it with ease; but in a raging tempest the best admonitions run upon a desperate rock"

— Tubbe, Henry (1618-1655)

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