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Date: 1696

"I find the danger now: my Spirits start / At the alarm, and from all quarters come / To Man my Heart, the Citadel of love."

— Southerne, Thomas (1659-1746)

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Date: 1701

"This may give him hopes, that tho' his Trunk return to its native Dust he may not all Perish, but the Inhabitant of it may remove to another Mansion; especially since he knows only Mechanically that they have, not Demonstratively how they have, even a present Union."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

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Date: May 10, 1704

"Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: Monday, June, 1711

"The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a reasonab...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

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Date: 1716

"If midst of Thoughts that crowd into thy Mind, / The Care of absent Friends a Place can find, / Retire a while from Warlike Noise and Throng / Into thy inmost Tent, and listen to my Song."

— Monck [née Molesworth], Mary (1677?-1715)

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Date: September 10, 1726

"Yet we must not suppose that they are continually in their Retirement; they would become useless if they were so. But on the contrary, great Numbers of them are always going to and fro; and if one of them chances to go by the Cell or Lodge of another which has the least real or imaginary conform...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

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Date: 1727

"The common Fluency of Speech in many Men, and most Women, is owing to a Scarcity of Matter, and a Scarcity of Words; for whoever is a Master of Language, and hath a Mind full of Ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the Choice of both; whereas common Speakers have only one Set of Ide...

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

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Date: 1753

Locke's "guiding Hand th'ideal Blank explores, / And opens wide the Senses' various Doors, / Thro' which the thronging Thoughts their Passage find, / In social Tribes, and stock the peopled Mind."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

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Date: 1760-7

"Blessed is the man whose heart hath not condemn'd him; whether he be rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided and informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower on h...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1774

"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

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