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Date: c. 370-365 B.C.

"After this their happiness depends upon their self-control; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of t...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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Date: 1686, 1689, 1697

"Indeed, whosoever considers the curious Inventions of Wit, the vast Comprehension and subtile Inferences of the Understanding, the wonderful Sagacity and Prospect of Prudence, the noble Endowments and Speculations of the Mind, the quick Transitions and Successions of Thoughts, together with the ...

— Nourse, Timothy (c.1636–1699)

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Date: 1712

"When she to foreign Objects Audience gives, / Their Strokes and Motions in the Brain perceives, / As these Perceptions we Ideas name, / From her own Pow'r and active Nature came, / So when discern'd by Intellectual Light, / Her self her various Passions does excite, / To Ill her Hate, to Good he...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1712

"Which by her secret uncontested Nod / Her Messengers the Spirits sends abroad, / Thro' ev'ry nervous Pass, and ev'ry vital Road. / To fetch from ev'ry distant Part a Train, / Of outward Objects to enrich the Brain."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1712

"How is the Image to the Sense convey'd? / On the tun'd Organ how the Impulse made? / How, and by which more noble Part the Brain / Perceives th'Idea, can their Schools explain? / 'Tis clear, in that Superior Seat alone / The Judge of Objects has her secret Throne."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1715

"Thy gentle Temper, / Is form'd with Passions mixt in due Proportion, / Where no one overbears nor plays the Tyrant, / But join in Nature's Business, and thy Happiness: / While mine disdaining Reason and her Laws, / Like all thou can'st imagine wild and furious, / Now drive me head-long on, now w...

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

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Date: 1720

"His Fancy still awake; the roving Guest / Usurps the Throne of Reason in his Breast: / Forms great Ideas, and religious Schemes, / A busy mime, and floats in golden Dreams."

— Amhurst, Nicholas (1697-1742)

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Date: 1733-4

"Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; / Reason's comparing balance rules the whole."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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Date: January 1739

"The attention is on the stretch; the posture of the mind is uneasy; and the spirits being diverted from their natural course, are not governed in their movements by the same laws, at least not to the same degree, as when they flow in their usual channel."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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Date: 1760-7

"It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind:--What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things,--that trifles light as air, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it so immoveably within it,--that Euclid's de...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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