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Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"No man has ever been drawn to crimes by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation, how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object, and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation, till he has recal...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1751

"Thus a lively Imagination and unperceived Self-Love, fetter the Heart in certain ideal Bonds of their own creating: Till at length some turbulent and furious Passion arising in its Strength, breaks these fantastic Shackles which Fancy had imposed, and leaps to its Prey like a Tyger chained by Co...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

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Date: Tuesday, March 12, 1751

"There is no snare more dangerous to busy and excursive minds, than the cobwebs of petty inquisitiveness, which entangle them in trivial employments and minute studies, and detain them in a middle state, between the tediousness of total inactivity, and the fatigue of laborious efforts, enchant th...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1662, 1762

"Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and we are delivered."

— The Church of England

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Date: 1766

Gallantry "suffers, sometimes, another passion to get before it; reason and interest, often, hold the bridle, and, make it give way to our situation, and, affairs."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

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Date: 1774

"Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with."

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

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Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1779, 1781

"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seld...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1779, 1781

"The good and evil of Eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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