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Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: September 1, 1759.

"The mind cannot retire from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn aside from one object but by passing to another."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"When the senses are gently and naturally shut up, and the command over the body intermitted, as in sleep, if we think at all we are said to dream; and generally wander through airy tracks of thought, which have no agreement with each other, nor are at all corrected by the judgment."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

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Date: 1765

"I said that the prayers in the Common Prayer Book were such as were made by other men, and not by the motions of the Holy Ghost, within our hearts; and as I said, the apostle saith, he will pray with the Spirit, and with the understanding; not with the Spirit and the Common Prayer Book."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

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Date: 1766

"A 'vision', passes, inwardly, in the mind; and, is supposed to be, only, an action of the imagination. An 'apparition', strikes the senses, outwardly, and, is supposed to be, an object from without."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

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Date: 1775

"In the wildest flights of fancy, it is probable that no single idea occurs to us but such as had a connection with some other impression or idea, previously existing in the mind."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

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Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"The general objection which is made to philosophy's introduction into the regions of taste, is, that it checks and restrains the flights of the imagination, and gives that timidity which an over carefulness not to err or act contrary to reason is likely to produce."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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Date: December 10, 1776; 1777

"In the midst of the highest flights of fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside from first to last, though I admit her more powerful operation is upon reflexion."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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Date: December 10, 1778; 1779

"Where all is novelty, the attention, the exercise of the mind is too violent."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

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Date: 1779-1780, 1781

"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...

— 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.