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Date: 1700

"Her Night-gown hanging loose, discover’d her charming Bosom, which cou’d bear no Name, but Transport, Wonder and Extasy, all which struck his Soul, as soon as the Object hit his Eye; her Breasts with an easy Heaving, show’d the Smoothness of her Soul and of her Skin; their Motions were so langui...

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

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Date: 1700

"Now what is it that strikes a judicious Tast? Not that to be sure which injures the absent, or provokes the Company, which poisons the Mind under pretence of entertaining it, proceeding from or giving Countenance to false Ideas, to dangerous and immoral Principles."

— Astell, Mary (1666–1731)

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Date: 1700

"This very Morning I'll prepare for Turin, / Where Time and Absence will deface the Image / Of that bewitching Beauty, which how haunts / My tortur'd Mind."

— Centlivre [née Freeman; other married name Carroll], Susanna (bap. 1669?, d. 1723)

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Date: 1702

"Do you understand how your Soul ... preserves its Treasure of Ideas, to produce them at pleasure"?

— Trotter, Catherine, later Cockburn, (1674?-1749)

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Date: 1702

"The force of which Argument lies thus, Cogitation in the Soul answering to Motion in Body, as the same Motion cannot be restor'd, but a new Motion may be produc'd; so the same Cogitations cannot be restor'd, but new Cogitations must be produc'd."

— Trotter, Catherine, later Cockburn, (1674?-1749)

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Date: 1702

"When Friends converse together Face to Face; / Then freely they Unbosom their Requests, / And treasure Secrets in each others Breasts, / As in firm Cabinets, close lock'd, where none / Can find the Key, but only each his own."

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

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Date: 1702

The "Memory of some doth rot"

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

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Date: w. 1682, 1702

Friendship springs "From some interiour, hidden, innate Cause, / In Noble Breasts, uncircumscrib'd by Laws"

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

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Date: w. 1684, 1702

"These rugged Walls, less grievous are to me, / Than those bedeck'd with curious Arras be / T'a guilty Conscience; to a wounded Heart, / A Palace cannot palliate that smart: / Tho' drunk with Pleasure, dull with Opiates, / Some seem as Senseless of their sad Estates, / Till on their Dying-Beds Co...

— Mollineux [née Southworth], Mary (1651-1695)

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Date: 1703

"Distorted Nature shakes at the Controul, / With strong Convulsions rends my strugling Soul; / Each vital String cracks with th' unequal Strife, / Departing Love racks like departing Life; / Yet there the Sorrow ceases with the Breath, / But Love each day renews th' torturing scene of Death."

— Egerton [née Fyge; other married name Field], Sarah (1670-1723)

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