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Date: 1785

"He [Johnson] said, he did not grudge Burke's being the first man in the House of Commons, for he was the first man every where; but he grudged that a fellow who makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar cruet, should make a figure in the House of Commons, mere...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1785

"I have often experienced, that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory: they grow mellow."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"So poignant a mind in a vulgariz'd shell,/ Resembles a bucket of gold in a well; / 'Tis like Ceylon's best spice in a rude-fashion'd jar, / Or Comedy coop'd in a Dutch man of war."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

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Date: 1789

"A different store his richer freight imparts-- / The gem of virtue, and the gold of hearts; / The social sense, the feelings of mankind, / And the large treasure of a godlike mind!"

— Brooke, Henry (c. 1703-1783)

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Date: January 19, 1791

"But it is then, and basking in the sunshine of unmerited fortune, that low, sordid, ungenerous, and reptile souls swell with their hoarded poisons; it is then that they display their odious splendour, and shine out in full lustre of their native villainy and baseness."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

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Date: 1791

"Every page of the Rambler shews a mind teeming with classical allusion and poetical imagery."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1796

"A plague on stoicks! / I cannot hoop my heart about with iron, / Like an old beer-butt"

— Colman, George, the younger (1762-1836)

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