page 1 of 2     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1615

"Go too then, is not he said to know himself, who can tell how to temper and order the state and condition of his mind, how to appease those civil tumults within himself, by the storms and waves whereof he is pitifully tossed, and how to suppress and appease those varieties of passions wherewith ...

— Crooke, Helkiah (1576-1648)

preview | full record

Date: 1664

"And finally, when a rational soul is present in this machine it will have its principal seat in the brain, and reside there like the fountain-keeper who must be stationed at the tanks to which the fountain's pipes return if he wants to produce, or prevent, or change their movements in some way."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

preview | full record

Date: 1691

"Thirdly, Let us hence duly learn to prize and value our Souls; is the Body such a rare Piece, what this is the Soul? the Body is but the Husk or Shell, the Soul is the Kernel; the Body is but the Cask, the Soul the precious Liquor contained in it; the Body is but the Cabinet; the Soul the Jewel;...

— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627–1705)

preview | full record

Date: 1703

"I found the Fond, Believing, Love-sick Maid, / Loose, unattir'd, warm, tender, full of Wishes; / Fierceness and Pride, the Guardians of her Honour, / Were charm'd to Rest, and Love alone was waking. / Within her rising Bosom all was calm, / As peaceful Seas that know no Storms, and only / Are ge...

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

preview | full record

Date: 1724

"So possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in Wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by Conscience; and that Centinel once doz'd, sleeps fast, not to be awaken'd while the Tide of Pleasure continues to flow, or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ourselves again."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

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)

preview | full record

Date: 1735

"God gave us Reason ... A faithful guide to comfort and to save, / Till the mind floats, like Peter on the wave."

— Harte, Walter (1708/9-1774)

preview | full record

Date: January 1739

"Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action where its courage...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

Date: 1748

"My bosom had been hitherto a stranger to such a flood of joy as now rushed upon it: My faculties were overborn by the tide"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

preview | full record

Date: 1751, 1777

"They [cruel ideas] still haunt his solitary hours, damp his most aspiring thoughts, and show him, even to himself, in the most contemptible and most odious colours imaginable."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

preview | full record

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