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Date: December 1790

"A few fundamental truths meet the first enquiry of reason, and appear as clear to an unwarped mind, as that air and bread are necessary to enable the body to fulfil its vital functions; but the opinions which men discuss with so much heat must be simplified and brought back to first principles; ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

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Date: December 1790

"Perhaps the most improving exercise of the mind, confining the argument to the enlargement of the understanding, is the restless enquiries that hover on the boundary, or stretch over the dark abyss of uncertainty."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

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Date: 1791

"But a convert from Popery to Protestantism, gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing that he retains; there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"He [Johnson] entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a circuitous process; one he observed was the eye of the mind, the other the nose of the mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"A young gentleman present took up the argument against him, and maintained that no man ever thinks of the nose of the mind, not adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my mind's eye, Horatio.'"

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"That his own diseased imagination should have so far deceived him, is strange; but it is stranger still that some of his friends should have given credit to his groundless opinion, when they had such undoubted proofs that it was totally fallacious; though it is by no means surprising that those ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"It seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease; for he grows fat upon it."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"No, Sir; violent pain of mind, like violent pain of body, must be severely felt."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1791

"While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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