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Date: 1744

"Thirst of Applause is Virtue's second guard; / Reason her first; but Reason wants an aid; / Our private Reason is a flatterer; / Thirst of Applause calls Public Judgment in, / To poise our own, to keep an even scale, / And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"To store up treasure with incessant toil,-- / This is man's province, this his highest praise, / To this great end keen Instinct stings him on. / To guide that Instinct, Reason! is thy charge; / 'Tis thine to tell us where true treasure lies."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"But, Reason failing to discharge her trust, / Or to the deaf discharging it in vain, / A blunder follows; and blind Industry, / Gall'd by the spur, but stranger to the course, / (The course where stakes of more than gold are won,) / O'erloading, with the cares of distant age, / The jaded spirits...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"The witnesses are heard; the cause is o'er; / Let Conscience file the sentence in her court, / Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Fierce passions, so mismeasured to this scene, / Stretch'd out, like eagles' wings, beyond our nest, / Far, far beyond the worth of all below, / For earth too large, presage a nobler flight, / And evidence our title to the skies."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Think not our passions from Corruption sprung, / Though to Corruption now they lend their wings; / That is their mistress, not their mother."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"I see, / I feel a grandeur in the Passions too, / Which speaks their high descent, and glorious end; / Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Like the proud Eastern [Nebuchadnezzar], struck by Providence, / What, though our passions are run mad, and stoop, / With low terrestrial appetite, to graze / On trash, on toys, dethroned from high desire?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Yet still, through their disgrace [the passions'], no feeble ray / Of greatness shines, and tells us whence they fell: / But these (like that fallen monarch [Adam] when reclaim'd) / When Reason moderates the rein aright, / Shall re-ascend, remount their former sphere, / Where once they soar'd il...

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Whence, then, those thoughts? those towering thoughts that flew / Such monstrous heights?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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