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Date: Friday, March 17, 1727

"Musick has something so peculiar in it, that it exerts a willing Tyranny over the Mind, and forms the ductil Soul into whatever Shape the Melody directs."

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

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Date: Friday, April 14, 1727

"A Man of true Honour will as soon break open a Lock as a Letter, which does not belong to him; and pick his Neighbour's Pocket, as soon as discover his Nakedness in this Respect; for a Letter, being the Representative of the Person's Heart, who sends it, ought to pass, without Examination or Int...

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

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Date: Friday, April 21, 1727

"For though it is generally believed that few Statesmen are much afflicted with this terrible Inmate; yet, upon a careful Inspection of human Nature, I find it to be a vulgar Error; and am fully satisfied that, notwithstanding the outward placid Behaviour and smiling Aspect of t...

— Caleb d'Anvers [pseud. for Nicholas Amhurst, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke, and William Pulteney, Earl of Bath]

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Date: 1774

"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"I would pass some of my time in reading, and the rest in the company of people of sense and learning, and chiefly those above me; and I would frequent the mixed companies of men and women of fashion, which, though often frivolous, yet they unbend and refresh the mind, not uselessly, because they...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"Pry into the recesses of their hearts yourself, as far as you are able, and never implicitly adopt a character upon common fame; which, though generally right as to the great outlines of characters, is always wrong in some particulars."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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Date: 1774

"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

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