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Date: 1774

"It is a very old and very true maxim, that those kings reign the most secure and the most absolute, who reign in the hearts of their people."

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

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Date: 1774

"I often paint you in my imagination, in your present lontananza, and, while I view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar ...

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

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Date: 1774

"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...

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

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Date: 1774

"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."

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

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Date: 1774

"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."

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

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Date: 1774

"Vanity is unquestionably the ruling passion in women; and it is much flattered by the attentions of a man who is generally esteemed by men; when his merit has received the stamp of their approbation, women make it current, that is to say, put him in fashion."

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

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Date: 1774

"I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, mines, drachms, and sesterces, like the learned blockheads in us; but to observe their choice of words, their harmony of diction, their method, their distribution...

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

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Date: 1775

"Of vulgar minds why nature shuns the praise, / And why to yours her every charm displays; / Whether the happy strokes of beauty shine / On fancy's mirror, or in HOGARTH's line; / Whether to habit, mode, or place confin'd, / Or fixt a general truth in every mind; / Discussions these will wing our...

— Shepherd, Richard (1731/2-1809)

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Date: 1775

"But, O, my brother! if thou hast a heart / That is not steel'd with stoic apathy / Against the magic of all-conqu'ring love, / Beware of beauty's pow'r; for she has charms / Wou'd melt the frozen breast of hoary age, / Or draw the lonely hermit from his cell / To gaze upon her."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721-1784)

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Date: 1777

"Courage, the warrior's bosom steel'd."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

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