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Date: Tuesday, July 3, 1750

"hey are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds, which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: November 15, 1751

"My life was divided between the care of providing topicks for the entertainment of my company, and that of collecting company worthy to be entertained; for I soon found, that wit, like every other power, has its boundaries; that its success depends upon the aptitude of others to receive impressi...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: March 1756

"The thought-kindling light, / Thy prime production, darts upon my mind / Its vivifying beams, my heart illumines, / And fills my soul with gratitude and Thee."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

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Date: 1760-7

"[A]nd what is more astonishing, he had never in his whole life the least light or spark of subtilty struck into his mind, by one single lecture upon Crackenthorp or Burgersdicius, or any Dutch logician or commentator."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1760-7

Ideas "follow and succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, just like the images in the inside of a lanthorn turned round by the heat of a candle."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"In every human breast there lives enshrined / Some atom pregnant with the' etherial mind; / Some plastic power, some intellectual ray, / Some genial sunbeam from the source of day; / Something that, warm and restless to aspire, / Works the young heart, and sets the soul on fire, / And bids us al...

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"Strong and more strong the light celestial shines, / Each thought ennobles, and each sense refines, / Till all the soul, full opening to the flame, / Exalts to virtue what she felt for fame."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

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