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Date: 380-360 B.C.

"The body is held together at a certain tension between the extremes of hot and cold, and dry and wet, and so on, and our soul is a temperament or adjustment of these same extremes, when they are combined in just the right proportion."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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Date: w. 350 B.C.

"Voice is a kind of sound characteristic of what has soul in it; nothing that is without soul utters voice, it being only by a metaphor that we speak of the voice of a flute or the lyre or generally of what (being without soul) possesses the power of producing a succession of notes which differ i...

— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

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Date: 1594, 1623

"How irksome is this music to my heart! / When such strings jar, what hope of harmony? "

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1597

"Harp on it still shall I, till heart-strings break."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1600

"Such harmony is in immortal souls, /But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: 1603

"Now see that noble and most sovereign reason / Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

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Date: w. c. 61-63?, trans. 1611

"Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."

— Paul of Tarsus (b.c. 10, d.c. 67)

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Date: 1651

"Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of [the rational soul]; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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Date: 1659

"The minde is sometimes a Bull, sometimes a Serpent, and sometimes a flame of fire; and then the musick of the soule is quite out of tune; the Bells ring backward as in some general conflagration."

— Tubbe, Henry (1618-1655)

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Date: 1659

"Nothing puts a man so much out of tune as discontent."

— Tubbe, Henry (1618-1655)

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