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Date: April 1750, 1791

"Hail, wond'rous Being, who in pow'r supreme / Exists from everlasting, whose great Name / Deep in the human heart, and every atom, / The Air, the Earth or azure Main contains, / In undecypher'd characters is wrote."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: April 1750, 1791

"O what can words, / The weak interpreters of mortal thoughts, / Or what can thoughts (tho' wild of wing they rove / Thro' the vast concave of th'aetherial round) / If to the Heav'n of Heavens they'd win their way / Advent'rous, like the birds of night they're lost, / And delug'd in the flood of ...

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: April 1750, 1791

"'Tis then, nor sooner, that the restless mind / Shall find itself at home; and like the ark / Fix'd on the mountain-top, shall look-aloft / O'er the vague passage of precarious life; / And, winds and waves and rocks and tempests past, / Enjoy the everlasting calm of Heav'n."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: April 1750, 1791

"Tho' gratitude were bless'd with all the pow'rs / Her bursting heart cou'd long for, tho' the swift, / The firey-wing'd imagination soar'd / Beyond ambition's wish--yet all were vain / To speak him as he is, who is INEFFABLE."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: April 1750, 1791

"Yet still let reason thro' the eye of faith / View Him with fearful love; let truth pronounce, / And adoration on her bended knee / With Heav'n-directed hands confess His reign."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: Tuesday, May 22, 1750

"He saw that, instead of conquering their fears, the endeavour of his gay friends was only to escape them; but his philosophy chained his mind to its object, and rather loaded him with shackles than furnished him with arms."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Saturday March 24, 1750

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Saturday, November 10, 1750

"It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fictitious benevolence."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Tuesday, November 13, 1750

"Nothing seems to have been more universally dreaded by the ancients than orbity, or want of children; and, indeed, to a man who has survived all the companions of his youth, all who have participated his pleasures and his cares, have been engaged in the same events, and filled their minds with t...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Saturday, August 25, 1750

In "the seats of innocence and tranquility ... where I should see reason exerting her sovereignty over life, without any interruption from envy, avarice, or ambition, and every day passing in such a manner as the severest wisdom should approve."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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