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Date: 1741, 1742, 1755

"Which they explained by a Bottle's being filled with Sea Water, that swimming there a while, on the Bottle's breaking, flowed in again, and mingled with the common Mass."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

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Date: 1759

"His mind is continually occupied with what is too grand and solemn, to leave any room for the impressions of those frivolous objects, which fill up the attention of the dissipated and the gay."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1759

"The soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of indulgent humanity are in comparison but little insisted upon, and seem on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have been often regarded as meer weaknesses which it behoved a wise man not to harbour in his breast."

— Smith, Adam (1723-1790)

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Date: 1762

"In the latter passage, the most striking circumstances are selected to fill the mind with the grand and terrible. The former is a collection of minute and low circumstances, which scatter the thought and make no impression."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

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Date: 1762

"Grandeur and novelty fix the attention for a considerable time, excluding all other ideas; and the mind thus occupied feels no vacuity."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

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Date: 1762

"In such a state, the train of perceptions must not only be slow, but extremely uniform. Anger newly inflamed eagerly grasps its object, and leaves not a cranny in the mind for another thought than of revenge."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

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Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

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Date: December 14, 1770; 1771

"He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration, with which, he is told, so many others have been favoured. He never travelled to Heaven to gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere common sense and a plain underst...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of antient and modern Art, will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully collected and thoroughly digested."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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