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Date: 1754

"'Orandum est', let us pray, says Juvenal, 'ut sit mens sana in corpore sano', for a sound Mind in a healthy Body; and every deformed Person should add this Petition, 'ut sit mens recta in corpore curvo', for an upright Mind in a crooked one."

— Hay, William (1695-1755)

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Date: 1759

"Their superficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own consciences should tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth should ever come to be known."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1759

"He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of self-delusion, which covers from his view the deformities of his own conduct. Rather than see our o...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1759

"We are so nice in this respect that even a rape dishonours, and the innocence of the mind cannot, in our imagination, wash out the pollution of the body."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1759

"Bring him into society, and he is immediately provided with the mirror which he wanted before. It is placed in the countenance and behaviour of those he lives with, which always mark when they enter into, and when they disapprove of his sentiments; and it is here that he first views the propriet...

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1760-7

"That had said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man's character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look'd in,--view'd the soul stark naked;--observ'd all her motions,--her machinations;--tra...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

Wit and judgment "in this world never go together; inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east is from west.--So, says Locke,--so are farting and hickuping, say I."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

"[A]n illustration is no argument,--nor do I maintain the wiping of a looking-glass clean, to be a syllogism;--but you all, may it please your worships, see the better for it,--so that the main good these things do, is only to clarify the understanding, previous to the application of the argument...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

The "conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures it may) insensibly become hard;--and, like some tender parts of his body, by much stress and continual hard usage, lose, by degrees, that nice sense and perception with which God and nature endow'd it"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

In Catholicism a man's conscience could not possibly continue for long blinded;--"three times in a year, at least, he must go to confession."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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