work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
5775,"",Reading,2009-09-14 19:43:33 UTC,"[...] Like the lightning's flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity. I do not now allude to taht quick perception of truth, which is so intuitive that it baffles research, and makes us at a loss to determine whether it is reminiscence or ratiocination, lost sight of in its celerity, that opens the dark cloud. Over those instantaneous associations we have little power; for when the mind is once enlarged by excursive flights, or profound reflection, the raw materials will, in some degree, arrange themselves. The understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination and warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring. Over this subtile electric fluid, how little power do we possess, and over it how little power can reason obtain. These fine intractable spirits appear to be the essence of genius, and beaming its eagle eye, produce in the most eminent degree the happy energy of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct. These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature.
(p. 113-114)",2003-10-23,15404,•Cross reference: Wollstonecraft seems to be borrowing Akenside's metaphor of concentered beams.,"""These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow creatures; forcing them to view with interest the objects reflected from the impassioned imagination, which they passed over in nature.""",Optics,2012-01-23 16:59:51 UTC,Chapter VI
5813,"",Searching on-line offerings at Free-Press Online Library of Liberty (OLL),2005-05-26 00:00:00 UTC,"Nor is there any difficulty in accounting for this universal miscarriage. The wisest preceptor thus circumstanced must labour under insuperable disadvantages. No situation can be so unnatural as that of a prince, so difficult to be understood by him who occupies it, so irresistibly propelling the mind to mistake. The first ideas it suggests are of a tranquillising and soporific nature. It fills him with the opinion of his secretly possessing some inherent advantage over the rest of his species, by which he is formed to command and they to obey. If you assure him of the contrary, you can expect only an imperfect and temporary credit; for facts, which in this case depose against you, speak a language more emphatic and intelligible than words. If it were not as he supposes, why should every one that approaches be eager to serve him? The sordid and selfish motives by which they are really animated he is very late in detecting. It may even be doubted whether the individual, who was never led to put the professions of others to the test by his real wants, has in any instance been completely aware of the little credit that is often due to them. A prince finds himself courted and adored long before he can have acquired a merit entitling him to such distinctions. By what arguments can you persuade him laboriously to pursue what appears so completely superfluous? How can you induce him to be dissatisfied with his present acquisitions, while every other person assures him that his accomplishments are admirable and his mind a mirror of sagacity? How will you persuade him who finds all his wishes anticipated, to engage in any arduous undertaking, or propose any distant object for his ambition?",,15493,"","""How can you induce him to be dissatisfied with his present acquisitions, while every other person assures him that his accomplishments are admirable and his mind a mirror of sagacity?""","",2009-09-14 19:43:47 UTC,Vol. I
7335,"","Searching ""mind"" in C-H Lion",2013-03-22 20:43:44 UTC,"The kind reception of Mrs. Arlbery, and all the animation of her discourse, were thrown away upon Camilla. An absent smile, and a few faint acknowledgments of her goodness were all she could return: Eugenia abandoned when she might have been served, Edgar contemning when he might have been approving---these were the images of her mind, which resisted entrance to all other.
(III.v.5, p. 58)",,20030,"","""An absent smile, and a few faint acknowledgments of her goodness were all she could return: Eugenia abandoned when she might have been served, Edgar contemning when he might have been approving---these were the images of her mind, which resisted entrance to all other.""","",2013-03-22 20:43:44 UTC,Chapter 5. A Sermon
5744,"",Reading,2013-04-22 03:51:59 UTC,"These metaphysic rights entering into common life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their strait line. Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The simple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate society in but one point of view, all these simple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its single end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole should be imperfectly and anomalously answered, than that, while some parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.
(pp. 90-1, p. 54 in Pocock ed.)",,20111,"","""Indeed in the gross and complicated mass of human passions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo such a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes absurd to talk of them as if they continued in the simplicity of their original direction.""",Optics,2013-04-22 03:51:59 UTC,""
7587,"","Searching ""mirror"" and ""mind"" in ECCO-TCP",2013-08-15 23:52:46 UTC,"It perhaps deserves to be remarked that this sort of miscellaneous literary employment, seems, for the time at least, rather to damp and contract, than to enlarge and invigorate, the genius. The writer is accustomed to see his performances answer the mere mercantile purpose of the day, and confounded with those of persons to whom he is secretly conscious of a superiority. No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. Among effusions of a nobler cast, I find occasionally interspersed some of that homily-language, which, to speak from my own feelings, is calculated to damp the moral courage, it was intended to awaken. This is probably to be assigned to the causes above described.
(pp. 66-8)",,22167,"","""No neighbour mind serves as a mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness.""",Mirror,2013-08-15 23:52:46 UTC,Chapter V
7690,"",Searching in ECCO-TCP,2013-09-25 16:07:50 UTC,"There is still another amusement arising from the correct knowledge of objects; and that is the power of creating, and representing scenes of fancy; which is still more a work of creation, than copying from nature. The imagination becomes a camera obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as they really are; while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful scenes, and chastened by rules of art, forms it's pictures, not only from the most admirable parts of nature; but in the best taste.
(p. 52)",,22861,INTEREST. USE IN ENTRY.,"""The imagination becomes a camera obscura, only with this difference, that the camera represents objects as they really are; while the imagination, impressed with the most beautiful scenes, and chastened by rules of art, forms it's pictures, not only from the most admirable parts of nature; but in the best taste.""",Rooms,2013-09-25 16:08:16 UTC,Essay II
7991,"","Searching ""fancy's mirror"" in ECCO",2014-07-29 19:43:56 UTC,"It may, perhaps, to some appear inconsistent, that what is not real should belong to Nature, and be authorized by wisdom. But with the assistance of my motto, I hope at once to elucidate the observation, brighten the mirror of fancy, and solve the fluctuation of doubt.
(p. 58)",,24343,"","""But with the assistance of my motto, I hope at once to elucidate the observation, brighten the mirror of fancy, and solve the fluctuation of doubt.""",Mirror,2014-07-29 19:43:56 UTC,""
5767,"",Reading; text from ECCO-TCP,2014-07-31 18:45:12 UTC,"When we were at tea and coffee, there came in Lord Trimblestown, in whose family was an ancient Irish peerage, but it suffered by taking the generous side in the troubles of the last century. He was a man of pleasing conversation, and was accompanied by a young gentleman, his son.
I mentioned that I had in my possession the Life of Sir Robert Sibbald, the celebrated Scottish antiquary, and founder of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh, in the original manuscript in his own hand-writing; and Page 189 that it was I believed the most natural and candid account of himself that ever was given by any man. As an instance, he tells that the Duke of Perth, then Chancellor of Scotland, pressed him very much to come over to the Roman-Catholick Faith; that he resisted all his Grace's arguments for a considerable time, till one day he felt himself as it were instantaneously convinced, and with tears in his eyes ran into the Duke's arms, and embraced the ancient religion; that he continued very steady in it for some time, and accompanied his Grace to London one winter, and lived in his household; that there he found the rigid fasting prescribed by the church very severe upon him; that this disposed him to reconsider the controversy, and having then seen that he was in the wrong, he returned to Protestantism. I talked of some time or other publishing this curious life. MRS. THRALE. ""I think you had as well let alone that publication. To discover such weakness exposes a man when he is gone."" JOHNSON. ""Nay, it is an honest picture of human nature. How often are the primary motives of our greatest actions as small as Sibbald's, for his re-conversion."" MRS. THRALE. ""But may they not as well be forgotten?"" JOHNSON. ""No, Madam, a man loves to review his own mind. That is the use of a diary, or journal."" LORD TRIMBLESTOWN. ""True, Sir. As the ladies love to see themselves in a glass; so a man likes to see himself in his journal."" BOSWELL. ""A very pretty allusion."" JOHNSON. ""Yes, indeed."" BOSWELL. ""And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal."" I next year found the very same thought in Atterbury's ""Sermon on Lady Cutts."" ""In this glass she every day dressed her mind."" This is a proof of coincidence, and not of plagiarism; for I had never read that sermon before.
(II, pp. 188-189)",,24377,"","""LORD TRIMBLESTOWN. 'True, Sir. As the ladies love to see themselves in a glass; so a man likes to see himself in his journal.' ... BOSWELL. ""And as a lady adjusts her dress before a mirror, a man adjusts his character by looking at his journal.'""",Mirror,2014-07-31 18:45:24 UTC,""