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Date: Tuesday, March 10, 1752

"It is not sufficient to maintain the first vigour; for excellence loses its effect upon the mind by custom, as light after a time ceases to dazzle."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1755

"That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1755

"Thou, superior to the Frowns / Of Fate, can'st pour thy Sunshine o'er the Soul, / And brighten Woe to Rapture!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

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Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: 1759

"He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is constant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but transitory lustre, irregular in its motion, and delusive in its direction."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: w. May, 1756; 1761

"For these, if I forget my patron's praise, / While bright ideas dance upon my mind, / Ne'er may these eyes behold auspicious days, / May friends prove faithless, and the Muse unkind."

— Fawkes, Francis (1720-1777)

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Date: 1762-3

"Conjecture thus, That mental ignis fatuus, Led his poor brains a weary dance From France to England, hence to France."

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1662, 1762

"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind; having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart."

— The Church of England

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Date: 1763

"Doth Virtue in thy bosom brighter glow, / Or from a Spring more pure doth Action flow? / Is not thy Soul bound with those very chains / Which shackle us, or is that SELF, which reigns / O'er Kings and Beggars, which in all we see / Most strong and sov'reign, only weak in Thee?"

— Churchill, Charles (1731-1764)

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Date: 1763

"I could have resisted her beauty only, but the mind which irradiates those speaking eyes"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

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