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Date: 1691

"But alas, I had not been sixty minutes Alphabetizing and sorting of Books before my old Rambling Maggot began to crawl and bite afresh; upon which I immediately grew as fickle and wavering as if I had drank Liquor distill'd from a Womans Brains; and nothing would satisfie me now till I saw the S...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

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Date: 1696

"He that strives not to Stem his Angers Tide, / Does a Mad Horse without a Bridle ride."

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

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Date: 1708

"Passions are too hurrying to last; Vapours that start from a Mercurial Brain, whose wild Chimera's flush the lighter Faculties, which tir'd i'th' vain pursuit of fancy'd Pleasures."

— Baker, Thomas (b. 1680-1)

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Date: 1727

"These abandon'd him to the Fury of an enrag'd Conscience, open'd the Sluices of the Soul, as I call them, and pour'd in a Flood of unsufferable Grief, letting loose those wild Beasts call'd Passions upon him, such as Rage, Anguish, Self-reproach, too late Repentance, and final Desperation, all t...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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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: 1741

"From the arietation and motion of the spirits in those canals proceed all the different sorts of thought."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744); Arbuthnot, John (bap. 1677, d. 1735)

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Date: 1742

"But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, / Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found. / As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel, / So dies in human hearts the thought of death."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1745

"For the fair Peace, / The tender Joys of Hymeneal Love, / May Jealousy awak'd, and fell Remorse, / Pour all their fiercest Venom thro' his Breast!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

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Date: 1758

"If, therefore, you would be a musical and harmonious Person, whenever, in Parties of Drinking, the Soul is bedewed with Wine, suffer her not to go forth, and defile herself [like a snail]."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

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Date: 1769

"The first reverend sage who delivered himself on this mysterious subject, having stroked his grey beard, and hemmed thrice with great solemnity, declared that the soul was an animal; a second pronounced it to be the number three, or proportion; a third contended for the number seven, or harmony;...

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

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