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Date: 1660, 1676

"For a scrupulous conscience does not take away the proper determination of the understanding; but it is like a Woman handling of a Frog or a Chicken, which, all their friends tell them, can do them no hurt, and they are convinced in reason that they cannot, they believe it and know it ;...

— Taylor, Jeremy (bap. 1613, 1667)

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Date: 1661

"For when the outward body doth consume, / In Hell such take their Hell-prepared room, / Their souls there having some such shape, or hue / Of beasts, whose actions they inclined to"

— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)

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Date: 1661

"But that, whose Sound, in the Pelîack Cave, / A Bridle to the Minds of Heroes gave, / And great Achilles Thoughts, the Centaure lov'd, / And when, upon the Strings, his Finger mov'd, / Hell's, or the Ocean's Fury 'twould allay."

— Ross, Thomas (bap. 1620, d. 1675)

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Date: 1664

"But that benefit which I consider most in it [rhyme], because I have not seldom found it, is, that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy: for imagination in a poet is a faculty so wild and lawless, that, like an high-ranging spaniel, it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the judgment."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: 1666

"The composition of all poems is or ought to be of wit, and wit in the poet, or wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it ...

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: 1667; 2nd ed. in 1674

"Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move / Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal note."

— Milton, John (1608-1674)

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Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"'Tis so wild [Wildblood's heart], that the Lady who has it in her keeping, would be glad she were well rid on't: it does so flutter about the Cage. 'Tis a meer Bajazet; and if it be not let out the sooner, will beat out the brains against the Grates."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: Jun 12, 1668; 1671

"But is not your heart of the nature of those Birds that breed in one Countrie, and goe to winter in another?"

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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Date: 1660, 1668

"Have you not seen an early-rising Lark / Spring from her Turf, making the Sun her mark, / Shooting her self aloft, yet higher, higher, / Till she had sung her self into Heaven's Quire? / Thus would he rise in Pray'r, and in a trice / His Soul become a Bird of Paradise."

— Wild, Robert (1615/16-1679)

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Date: November 1672, 1673

"Ay, ay, when the love is once come so far, that Spiritual Mind will never leave pulling, and pulling, till it has drawn the beastly body after it."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

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