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Date: 1740

"In a Word, I may palliate and soften as much as I please; but upon an honest Examination of my Heart, I am afraid the same Vanity which makes even homely People employ Painters to preserve a flattering Record of their Persons, has seduced me to print off this Chiaro Oscuro of my Mind."

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

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Date: 1740

"This Work, I say, shall not only contain the various Impressions of my Mind, (as in Louis the Fourteenth his Cabinet you have seen the growing Medals of his Person from Infancy to Old Age,) but shall likewise include with them the Theatrical History of my Own Time, from my first Appearance on th...

— Cibber, Colley (1671-1757)

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Date: 1741

"For one obscure or confused Idea, especially if it be of great Importance in the Question, intermingled with many clear ones, and placed in its Variety of Aspects towards them, will be in Danger of spreading Confusion over the whole Scene of Ideas, and thus may have an unhappy Influence to overw...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1741

"This will gradually give the Mind a Faculty of surveying many objects at once; as a Room that is richly adorned and hung round with a great Variety of Pictures, strikes the Eye almost at once with all that Variety, especially if they have been well surveyed one by one at first: This makes it hab...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

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Date: 1744

"I will endeavour in the following Dissection of our Puppet Heroe, to convince my dear Country Men and Country Women, that they are madly following an Ignis fatuus, or Will of the Whisp, which they take for real substantial Light, and which I ...

— Garrick, David (1717-1779)

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Date: 1744

"A mere existence or being is an indifferent thing, ('tis a Rasa Tabula) that may be coloured over with sin or holiness: and accordingly it receives its value from these; as a picture is esteemed not from the materials upon which it is drawn, but from the draught itself."

— South, Robert (1634-1716)

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Date: 1751

"Another Source of mutual Misapprehension on this Subject hath been 'the Introduction of metaphorical Expressions instead of proper ones.' Nothing is so common among the Writers on Morality, as 'the Harmony of Virtue'—'the Proportion of Virtue.'"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

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Date: 1751

"They [sense, imagination, and passion] are no more than the several Species of simple Colours laid, as it were, upon the Pallet; which, variously combined and associated by the Hand of an experienced Master, would indeed call forth every striking Resemblance, every changeful Feature of the Heart...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

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Date: August 27, 1751

"When a number of distinct images are collected by these erratick and hasty surveys, the fancy is busied in arranging them; and combines them into pleasing pictures with more resemblance to the realities of life as experience advances, and new observations rectify the former."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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