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Date: September 10, 1836

"In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make on me correspond with outlying objects, what difference does it make, whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul?"

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

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Date: September 10, 1836

"Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence without, or is only in the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and alike venerable to me."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

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Date: November 24, 1859

"A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impa...

— Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)

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Date: 1901-2, 1902

"It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often feminine than masculine, and young than old, whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or God...

— James, William (1842-1910)

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Date: 1901-2, 1902

"Such fleeting aspirations are mere 'velleitates,' whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system."

— James, William (1842-1910)

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Date: 1901-2, 1902

"In the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanical equilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another."

— James, William (1842-1910)

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Date: March 11, 2011

"The huge submerged bulk of the mental iceberg, with its stores of memory and acquired skills that have become automatic, like language, driving and etiquette, supplies people with the raw materials on which they can exercise their reason and decide what to think and what to do."

— Nagel, Thomas (b. 1937)

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Date: December 12, 2016

" And perhaps he speaks / of the nature of light, or the coils in my mind"

— De la O, Marsha

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