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Date: 1785

"He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen sarcastick wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of which I was the object, that, though I can bear such attacks as well as most men, I yet found myself so muc...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1785

"The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and superstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sobe...

— 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: 1785

"The mind of man can bear a certain pressure; but there is a point when it can bear no more."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1785-7, 1791, 1792

"Thus a large dumpling to its cell confin'd / (A very apt allusion to my mind)."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: 1785

"To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong: it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships, to weigh a guinea. I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his ...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

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Date: 1786, 1816

"In vain at glory gudgeon Boswell snaps-- / His mind's a paper kite--compos'd of scraps / Just o'er the tops of chimneys form'd to fly."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: w. 1782, 1786, 1816

"One of these beneficent Genii, assuming, without delay, the exterior of a shepherd, more renowned for his piety than all the derviches and santons of the region, took his station near a flock of white sheep, on the slope of a hill; and began to pour forth, from his flute, such airs of pathetic m...

— Beckford, William (1760-1844)

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Date: 1786

"His poverty, his hapless helpless irremediable poverty he justly considers as the cause of this consummation of human woe! his mind is alternately torn with the passions of grief and despondence, when he sees even the probability extinguished of having his health re-established!"

— Nolan, William (fl. 1786)

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