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Date: 1691

"This Voyage round the World was made in the Ship of Fancy, which every one knows, like the Cossaks Boats, sails as well by Land as Water.--And now I hope you are satisfied."

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

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Date: 1691

"This Cobler having been drinking till his Brains were shipwrackt in a deluge of Canary, yet unable with all that Liquor to quench his Nose, which appeared so flaming, that when he was smoaking, it could not be discerned by the most critical Eye, at which end his Pipe burned with the more red-hot...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

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Date: 1712, 1715, 1719

We "suffer our selves to be blown and toss'd by our Passions, without casting Anchor on the Coast of sound Judgment, or steering to the Harbour of right Reason"

— Barker, Jane (1675-1743)

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Date: 1719

"It is as impossible as needless, to set down the innumerable Crowd of Thoughts that whirl'd through that great Thorowfair of the Brain, the Memory, in this Night's Time."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

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Date: 1754

"The mind that chuses to nourish the turba, by a restless desire after impossibilities, takes delight, like the fireship, to communicate its devouring flame to all that are so miserable as to fall in its way"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

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Date: 1754

"It was the error of your judgment, Cylinda, and not a malicious heart, that caused your desire of leading my imagination in the same road with your own"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

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Date: 1756, 1766

"As the instincts and passions were wisely and kindly given us, to subserve many purposes of our present state, let them have their proper, subaltern share of action; but let reason ever have the sovereignty, (the divine law of reason and truth) and be, as it were, sail and wind to the vessel of ...

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

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Date: 1756, 1766

"This is beyond the reach of our conception. Imagination cannot plumb her line so low."

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

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Date: 1760-7

"Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time 'tis of so slight a frame and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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