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Date: 1786

"From that awful period, almost every expectation is forlorn: the heart is left unguarded: its great protector is no more: the vices therefore, which so long encompassed it in vain, obtain an easy victory: in crouds they pour into the defenceless avenues, and take possession of the soul: there is...

— Clarkson, Thomas (1760–1846)

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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock, with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence now percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth"

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1790, 1794, 1795, 1818, 1827

"For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

— Blake, William (1757-1827)

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Date: 1792

"But souls in common are a dreary waste, / By brambles, thistles, barb'rous docks disgrac'd; / That need the ploughshare, harrow, and the fire--"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

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Date: 1793

Corporal punishment closes all "wholsome avenues of mind ... and on every side we see them guarded with a train of disgraceful passions, hatred, revenge, despotism, cruelty, hypocrisy, conspiracy and cowardice."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

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Date: 1793

"Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

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Date: February 2, 1796

"Her head's like the island, folks tell on, / Which nothing but monkies can dwell on"

— Hoare, Prince (1755-1834)

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Date: November 10, 1813

"I by no means rank poetry or poets high in the scale of intellect. This may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruptions prevents an earthquake."

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: 1814

"No single passion, and no ruling thought / That leaves the rest, as once, unseen, unsought, / But the wild prospect when the Soul reviews, / All rushing through their thousand avenues"

— Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788-1824)

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Date: w. 1798-1800, 1814

"Not Chaos, not / The darkest pit of lowest Erebus, / Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out / By help of dreams--can breed such fear and awe / As fall upon us often when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man-- / My haunt, and the main region of my song."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

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