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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: 1760-7

"Yet I say, was Yorick never once in any one domicile of Phutatorius's brain--but the true cause of his exclamation lay at least a yard below."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1764

Perception is "a kind of drama, wherein some things are performed behind the scenes, others are represented to the mind in different scenes, one succeeding the another"

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

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Date: 1765 [1764]

"No, Isabella, said the princess, I should not deserve this incomparable parent, if the inmost recesses of my soul harboured a thought without her permission."

— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)

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Date: 1768

"I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the transfiguration of Raphael itself."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"For this, fair hope leads on the' impassion'd soul / Through life's wild labyrinths to her distant goal; / Paints in each dream, to fan the genial flame, / The pomp of riches, and the pride of fame, / Or fondly gives reflection's cooler eye / A glance, an image, of a future sky."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1773

"A thought, enbosom'd in this heart's recess / Shou'd, rising into act--Ah spare the rest!"

— Jerningham, Edward (1727-1812)

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Date: 1781

"Oh, I begin to take you--your days--the rusticated remains of a ruined Temple Critic--a smatterer of high life from the scenes of Cibber, which remain upon his imagination, as they do upon the stage, forty years after the real characters are lost"

— Burgoyne, John (1722-1792)

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Date: 1782

The mind may be "unfurnish'd" and listless

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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Date: 1782

"The mind and conduct mutually imprint / And stamp their image in each other's mint."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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