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Date: c. 43 AD

"Those things that men's untutored hearts revere, sunk in the bondage of their bodies--jewels, gold, silver, and polished tables, huge and round--all these are earthly dross, for which the untainted spirit, conscious of its own nature, can have no love, since it is itself light and uncumbered, wa...

— Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c. 4 B.C. - A.D. 65)

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Date: 1689

And yet there is, there is one prize / Lock'd in an adamantine Breast; / Storm that then, Love, if thou be'st wise, / A Conquest above all the rest, / Her Heart, who binds all Hearts in chains, / Castanna's Heart untouch'd remains."

— Cotton, Charles (1630-1687)

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Date: 1691

"Grace doth our Souls to God unite, / Like glorious Golden Chains."

— Keach, Benjamin (1640-1704)

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Date: 1724

"As a Stone in a Wall, fastened with Mortar, compressed by surrounding Stones, and involved in a Million of other Attractions, cannot fall to the Earth, nor sensibly exert its natural Gravity, no, not so much as to discover there is such a Principle in it; just so, the intelligent Soul, in this h...

— Cheyne, George (1671-1743)

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Date: 1730

"Thou golden chain 'twixt God and men, / Bless'd Reason! guide my life and pen."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1737

"Brave Souls when loos'd from this ignoble Chain / Of Clay, and sent to their own Heav'n again, / From Earth's gross Orb on Virtue's Pinions rise / In Æther wanton, and enjoy the Skies."

— Baker, Henry (1698-1774)

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Date: January 1739

"I know that the fear of the civil magistrate is as strong a restraint as any of iron, and that I am in as perfect safety as if he were chain'd or imprison'd."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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Date: 1739

"To usher forth the Virtues of the Mind! / From Nature's Chain, from Earthly Dross set free, / One only Appetite remained in Thee."

— Wesley, John and Charles

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Date: 1760

"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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Date: February 3, 1788

"The spirit of the Gospel 'proclaims liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound:' but these men rivet the chains of slavery; 'the iron enters into the Negro's soul,' while while his mind is left in all the darkness of ignorance, without one ray of those comforts ...

— Agutter, William (1758-835)

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