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Date: 1660, 1676

"For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ;...

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

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Date: 1691

"Twice every day a thousand Fancies and Fegaries crowd into my Noddle so thick as if my Brain kept open-house for all the Maggots in nature."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

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Date: 1704

"For, it is the opinion of choice virtuosi, that the brain is only a crowd of little animals, but with teeth and claws extremely sharp, and therefore cling together in the contexture we behold, like the picture of Hobbes's Leviathan, or like bees in perpendicular swarm upon a tr...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: 1718

"'From forth thy Bosom turn the Viper-Guest, / 'Or, e'er he bite thee, crush him at thy Breast"

— Amhurst, Nicholas (1697-1742)

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Date: 1729

"We have a faint Image of these Operations in Hawking: For Memory may be justly compar'd to the Dog that beats the Field, or the Wood, and that starts the Game; Imagination to the Falcon that clips it upon its Pinions after it; and Judgment to the Falconer, who directs the Flight, and who governs...

— Dennis, John (1658-1734)

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Date: 1732

"Malice, and Lust, voracious Birds of Prey, / That out-soar Reason, and our Wishes sway; / Desires' wild Seas, on which the wise are tost, / By Pilot Indolence, are safely crost."

— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)

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Date: 1742

"O treacherous Conscience! while she seems to sleep / On rose and myrtle, lull'd with siren song; / While she seems, nodding o'er her charge, to drop / On headlong appetite the slacken'd rein, / And give us up to licence, unrecall'd, / Unmark'd,---see, from behind her secret stand, / The sly info...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"These the part / Perform of eager monitors, and goad / The soul more sharply than with points of steel, / Her enemies to shun or to resist."

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1754

"If I cannot, draw out Cacus from his Den; I may pluck the Villain from my own Breast. I cannot cleanse the Stables of Augeas; but I may cleanse my own Heart from Filth and Impurity: I may demolish the Hydra of Vices within me; and should be careful too, that while I lop off ...

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

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Date: 1761, 1790

"Ev'n from this dark confinement with delight / She [the mind] looks abroad, and prunes herself for flight; / Like an unwilling inmate longs to roam / From this dull earth, and seek her native home."

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)

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