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Date: 1708, 1714

"The Human Mind and Body are both of 'em naturally subject to Commotions: and as there are strange Ferments in the Blood, which in many Bodys occasion an extraordinary discharge; so in Reason too, there are heterogeneous Particles which must be thrown off by Fermentation."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

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Date: Saturday, November 17, 1711

"I have often thought if the Minds of Men were laid open, we should see but little Difference between that of the Wise Man and that of the Fool. There are infinite Reveries, numberless Extravagancies, and a perpetual Train of Vanities which pass through both."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

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Date: Saturday, December 22, 1711

"The Use therefore of the Passions is to stir it up, and to put it upon Action, to awaken the Understanding, to enforce the Will, and to make the whole Man more vigorous and attentive in the Prosecutions of his Designs."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

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Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"The Sett of Ideas, which we received from such a Prospect or Garden, having entered the Mind at the same time, have a Sett of Traces belonging to them in the Brain, bordering very near upon one another; when, therefore, any one of these Ideas arises in the Imagination, and consequently dispatche...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

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Date: Saturday, June 28, 1712

"By this means they awaken other Ideas of the same Sett, which immediately determine a new Dispatch of Spirits, that in the same manner open other Neighbouring Traces, till at last the whole Sett of them is blown up, and the whole Prospect or Garden flourishes in the Imagination."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

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Date: 1741

"There are are some Persons who complain they cannot remember divine or human Discourses which they hear, when in Truth their Thoughts are wandering half the Time, or they hear with such coldness and Indifferency and a trifling Temper of Spirit, that it is no wonder the Things which are read or s...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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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)

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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)

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Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1777

"But the heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

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