page 5 of 6     per page:
sorted by:

Date: May 10, 1704

"Now it usually happens that these active spirits, getting possession of the brain, resemble those that haunt other waste and empty dwellings, which for want of business either vanish and carry away a piece of the house, or else stay at home and fling it all out of the windows."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

preview | full record

Date: 1705

"It did the curious Instruments confound, / And all the winding Labarynths of Sound, / The charming Musick-Rooms, that entertain / The Soul high seated in her Throne the Brain."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1705

A bullet may efface "The num'rous Lodgings, which did entertain / All Mem'ry's crowded Guests, and Fancy's aeiry Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

preview | full record

Date: Read 1680-1681, published 1705

"Memory then conceive to be nothing else but a Repository of Ideas formed partly by the Senses, but chiefly by the Soul it self: I say, partly by the Senses, because they are as it were the Collectors or Carriers of the Impressions made by Objects from without, delivering them to the Repository o...

— Hooke, Robert (1635-1703)

preview | full record

Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

preview | full record

Date: 1710, 1714

"In reality, has not every Fancy a like Privilege of passing; if any single one be admitted upon its own Authority? And what must be the Issue of such an Oeconomy, if the whole fantastick Crew be introduc'd, and the Door refus'd to none?"

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

preview | full record

Date: 1711

"Then you would have this variously disposing of the Images to be the work of the Spirits, that act under the Soul, as so many Labourers under some great Architect."

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

preview | full record

Date: Wednesday, June 13, 1711

"They tell us, that every Passion which has been contracted by the Soul during her Residence in the Body, remains with her in a separate State; and that the Soul in the Body or out of the Body, differs no more than the Man does from himself when he is in his House, or in open Air."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

preview | full record

Date: Monday, June, 1711

"The indolent Man descends from the Dignity of his Nature, and makes that Being which was Rational merely Vegetative: His Life consists only in the meer Encrease and Decay of a Body, which, with relation to the rest of the World, might as well have been uninformed, as the Habitation of a reasonab...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1711

"These active Liquors, which Admission find / Thro' the strait Paths, and leave the coarse behind, / Swift to the inmost Rooms their Passage beat, / And crowd around the Soul's Imperial Seat."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

preview | full record

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