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Date: 1742

"I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams / Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought, / From wave to wave of fancied misery, / At random drove, her helm of reason lost."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1742

"But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, / Soon close; where pass'd the shaft, no trace is found. / As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel, / So dies in human hearts the thought of death."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1744

"Eternity's vast ocean lies before thee; / There, there, Lorenzo, thy Clarissa sails. / Give thy mind sea-room; keep it wide of earth, / That rock of souls immortal; cut thy cord; / Weigh anchor; spread thy sails; call every wind; / Eye thy great Pole-star; make the land of life."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: 1756, 1766

"This is beyond the reach of our conception. Imagination cannot plumb her line so low."

— Amory, Thomas (1690/1-1788)

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Date: 1760-7

"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

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Date: 1765

""Unwise, who, tossing on the watery way, / All to the storm th'unfetter'd sail devolve; / Man more unwise resigns the mental sway, / Born headlong on by passion's keen resolve."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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Date: 1766

"Should you but discompose the tide, / On which Ideas wont to ride, / Ferment it with a yeasty Storm, / Or with high Floods of Wine deform."

— Lloyd, Evan (1734-1776)

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Date: October, 1784

"Prudence through the ground of misery cuts a river of patience, where the Mind swims in boats of tranquillity along the streams of life, until she arrives at the haven of death, where all streams meet."

— Anonymous

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Date: 1785

"The fluctuant mind, by various passions tost, / Now rides aloft, and now immerg'd, is lost"

— Perronet, Edward (1721-1792)

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