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Date: 1704

"Some again think that when our earthly tabernacles are disordered and desolate, shaken and out of repair, the spirit delights to dwell within them, as houses are said to be haunted, when they are forsaken and gone to decay."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: May 10, 1704

"Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: Monday, April 28, 1712

"But how can any of these Advantages be attained by one who is a mere Stranger to the Customs and Policies of his native Country, and has not yet fixed in his Mind the first Principles of Manners and Behaviour? To endeavour it, is to build a gawdy Structure without any Foundation; or, if I may be...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

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Date: September 10, 1726

"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

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Date: 1732

"Trace it to the fountain-head, and you shall not find that you had it by any of your senses, the only true means of discovering what is real and substantial in nature: you will find it lying amongst other old lumber in some obscure corner of the imagination, the proper receptacle of visions, fan...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

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Date: 1760-7

"Whether they were above my uncle Toby's reason,--or contrary to it,-- or that his brain was like wet tinder, and no spark could possibly take hold,--or that it was so full of saps, mines, blinds, curtins, and such military disqualifications to his seeing clearly into Prignitz and Scroderus's doc...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1763, 1767

"The guardian genius of his dawning thought, / Who wide disclos'd to wisdom's sacred ray / The eager inlets of his ample mind, / And pour'd upon each opening mental cell, / The virtue-forming scientific beam / With letter'd and religious radiance fill'd, / The fair expanses of his princely soul, ...

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

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Date: 1774

"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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