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Date: 1665

"But as though grains of Sand and Ashes be a part, but of a despicable smallness, and very easie, and liable to be scatter'd, and blown away; yet the skilful Artificer, by a vehement Fire, brings Numbers of these to afford him that noble substance, Glass, by whose help we may both see our selves,...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

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Date: 1665

"And since Gold-smiths and Refiners are wont all the year long carefully to save the very sweepings of their Shops, because they may contain in them some Filings, or Dust of those richer Metals, Gold and Silver; I see not why a Christian may not be as careful, not to lose the Fragments and lesser...

— Boyle, Robert (1627-1691)

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Date: 1750, 1752

"Whether the Mind, like Soil, doth not by Disuse grow stiff; and whether Reasoning and Study be not like stirring and dividing the Glebe?"

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

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Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined, as the richest jewels are soonest found to wear their settings."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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Date: 1766

"I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that the lessons of wisdom have never such a power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be ...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1790

"The worst of these politics of revolution is this; they temper and harden the breast, in order to prepare it for the desperate strokes which are sometimes used in extreme occasions."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

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Date: 1790

"In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition, with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninety-nine in an hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

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Date: January 19, 1791

"He must have a heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind themselves, through their conscience, against ...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

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Date: January 19, 1791

"It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

— 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.