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Date: c. 387 B.C.

"And so some clever fellow, a Sicilian perhaps or Italian, writing in allegory, by a slight perversion of language named this part of the soul a jar, because it can be swayed and easily persuaded, and the foolish he called the uninitiate, and that part of the soul in foolish people where the desi...

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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Date: 360-355 B.C.

"Imagine, then, for the sake of argument, that our minds contain a block of wax, which in this or that individual may be larger or smaller, and composed of wax that is comparatively pure or muddy, and harder in some, softer in others, and sometimes of just the right consistency."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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Date: 360-355 B.C.

"When we are babies we must suppose this receptacle empty, and take the birds to stand for pieces of knowledge."

— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)

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Date: 101

"But if you consider what is proper for a man, examine your store-house, see with what faculties you came into the world."

— Epictetus (c. 55-c.135)

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Date: 1273

"But for the retention and preservation of these forms, the 'phantasy' or 'imagination' is appointed; which are the same, for phantasy or imagination is as it were a storehouse of forms received through the senses."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

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Date: 1273

"Furthermore, for the apprehension of intentions which are not received through the senses, the 'estimative' power is appointed: and for the preservation thereof, the 'memorative' power, which is a storehouse of such-like intentions."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

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Date: 1273

"On the contrary, From its nature the memory is the treasury or storehouse of species."

— St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

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Date: Trans. 1425

"Haue alle þe ylke cifers togedur in þi mynde, a-rowe ychon aftur other."

— Johannes de Sacrobosco or Sacro Bosco; John of Holywood (c. 1195 - c. 1256)

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Date: 1594

"Till we grow to some ripeness of years, the soul of man doth only store itself with conceits of things of inferior and more open quality, which afterwards do serve as instruments unto that which is greater; in the meanwhile above the reach of meaner creatures it ascendeth not."

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

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Date: 1632

"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

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