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Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise / Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise / At least distempered, discontented thoughts, / Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, / Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

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Date: 1670

Weakness of mind may be water-like or wax-like

— Greville, Fulke, first Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1554-1628)

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Date: 1681

"The mind, that ocean where each kind / Does straight its own resemblance find, / Yet it creates, transcending these, / Far other worlds, and other seas"

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

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Date: November, 1682

"In pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; / But found their line too short, the well too deep; / And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep.

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: 1686, 1712

"Thus Vice and Virtue do my Soul divide, / Like a Ship tost between the Wind and Tide."

— Arwaker, Edmund (c.1655-1730)

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Date: 1687

"This Heart of mine, now wreck'd upon despair, / Was once as free and careless as the Air; / In th' early Morning of my tender years, / E're I was sensible of Hopes and Fears, / It floated in a Sea of Mirth and Ease, / And thought the World was only made to please; / No adverse Wind had ever stop...

— Cutts, John, Baron Cutts of Gowran (1660/1-1707)

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Date: 1691

"And strangely doth the Vast Abyss contain / Within the Vaster Ocean of his Brain."

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

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Date: 1691

"Learning lies deep, and short is Reason's Line, / And weakly do we guess at things Divine!"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

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Date: 1691

"If then the Medium's false [i.e., the senses], thrô which Arts go, / How can we hope the genuine Truth to know? / The Water pure and clear i'th' Fountain flows; / But with ill Mixtures doth its Nature lose; / And tasts of every Soil, thrô which it goes."

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

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Date: 1691

"What Magick force the Captiv'd Ear doth ty, / When well plac'd Words from Artfull Lips do fly, / And calm or raise the Mind, as Storms the Sea?"

— Heyrick, Thomas (bap. 1649. d. 1694)

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