page 2 of 4     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1754

"The mind would be little more than a channel through which ideas and notions glided from entity into nonentity."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"The scene of the mind, like a moving picture, must be governed with attention, that it may bring into our view the images we want, and as we want them. Otherwise ideas that are foreign to our actual train of thinking will frequently rush into our thoughts, and become objects of them whether we w...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"The idea I have, when this word is used, is always that of some particular white extension, or of several such whose ideas rush confusedly into the mind together."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"The words man or animal, raise in his mind no general idea; but in this case, as in the former, some particular idea of man, which the mind can frame without thinking of Alexander or Henry, rises there, and becomes representative of all men in general: or else several ideas of men, and other ani...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"Now the application of this corporeal image to what passes in the mind, or to the action of the mind when we meditate on various subjects, or on many distinct parts of the same subjects and when we communicate these thoughts to one another, sometimes with greater, and sometimes with less agitati...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

preview | full record

Date: 1759

"In the fairyland of fancy, genius may wander wild; there it has a creative power, and may reign arbitrarily over its own empire of chimeras."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

preview | full record

Date: 1759

"Moreover, so boundless are the bold excursions of the human mind, that in the vast void beyond real existence, it can call forth shadowy beings, and unknown worlds, as numerous, as bright, and, perhaps, as lasting, as the stars."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

preview | full record

Date: 1759

"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

preview | full record

Date: January 27, 1759.

"That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must some time be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

preview | full record

Date: September 1, 1759.

"If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

preview | full record

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