page 1 of 2     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1684

"My grateful Thoughts so throng to get abroad, / They over-run each other in the crowd: / To you with hasty flight they take their way, / And hardly for the dress of words will stay."

— Oldham, John (1653-1683)

preview | full record

Date: 1696

"Pitty would not now at least /Have been a stranger to her Breast"

— Oldmixon, John (1672/3-1742)

preview | full record

Date: 1698

"Nay, such Gentlemen would be much offended their Houses should not be clean Swept, and Garnish'd; yet, they are not, in the least, concern'd, that Cobwebs should hang in the Windows of their Intellect, and Dusty Ignorance dim and blear the Sight of the Noble Inhabitant."

— Sergeant, John (1622-1707)

preview | full record

Date: 1737

""Alas, my soul! thou pleasing companion of this body, thou fleeting thing that art now deserting it! whither art thou flying? to what unknown scene? all trembling, fearful, and pensive! what now is become of thy former wit and humour? thou shalt jest and be gay no more."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

preview | full record

Date: 1751

"All the senses, like the family at Harlowe-Place, in a confederacy against that which would animate, and give honour to the whole, were it allowed its proper precedence"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"Our simple ideas, and even our complex ideas, and notions return sometimes of themselves, we know not why, nor how, mechanically, as it were, uncalled by the mind, and often to the disturbance of it in the pursuit of other ideas, to which these intruders are foreign."

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

preview | full record

Date: 1754

"Intellect, the artificer, works lamely without his proper instrument, sense; which is the case when he works on moral ideas."

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

preview | full record

Date: 1774

"I find by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when the one suffers, the other sympathizes."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

preview | full record

Date: 1774

"Voltaire must be criticised; besides, every man's favorite is attacked: for every prejudice is exposed, and our prejudices are our mistresses; reason is at best our wife, very often heard indeed, but seldom minded."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

preview | full record

Date: August 16, 1820

"My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk--you must explain my metapcs to yourself."

— Keats, John (1795-1821)

preview | full record

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