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Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788

"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: April 5, 1781, 1788

"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1790

"[P]ains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;--Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again"

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

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Date: 1790, 1794

"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794

He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794

"Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

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Date: 1793

"Of all bondage, mental bondage is surely the most fatal; the absurd despotism which has hitherto, with more than gothic barbarity, enslaved the female mind, the enervating and degrading system of manners by which the understandings of women have been chained down to frivolity and trifles, have i...

— Hays, Mary (1760-1843)

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Date: September 10, 1802

"A Poet's Heart & Intellect should be combined, intimately combined & unified, with the great appearances in Nature -- & not merely held in solution & loose mixture with them, in the shape of formal Similies."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

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Date: 1809

"Could my ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store-closet it would be charming."

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

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