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Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit is a Standing-Army Government, / And Sense a sullen stubborn P---t."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the French, performs before it thinks, / And thoughtful Sense without Performance sinks."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1700, 1705

"Sense without Wit is Flegmatick and pale, / And is all Head, forsooth, without a Tail: / Wit without Sense is Cholerick and Red, / Has Tail enough indeed, but has no Head."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the jangling Chimes, rings all in one, / Till Sense, the Artist, sets them into Tune."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the Belly, if it be not fed, / Will starve the Members, and distract the Head."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit is the Fruitful Womb where Thoughts conceive, / Sense is the Vital Heat which Life and Form must give: / Wit is the Teeming Mother brings them forth, / Sense is the Active Father gives them Worth."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1701

"He [Good King Bacchus] does the chaos of the head refine, / And atom-thoughts jump into words by wine"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1701

"Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns; / For all's condens'd before the flame returns; The fermentation's of so weak a matter, / The humid damps the fume, and runs it all to water."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1701

"And if a bottle does their brains refine, / It makes their wit as sparkling as their wine."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1701

"No man was ever yet so void of sense, / As to debate the right of self-defence; / A principle so grafted in the mind, / With nature born, and does like nature bind."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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