page 1 of 5     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1700, 1705

"For Sense, like Water, is but Wit condense, / And Wit, like Air, is rarify'd from Sense."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit without Sense is like the Laughing-Evil, / And Sense unmix'd with Fancy is the D---l."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1700, 1705

"Wit, like the French, performs before it thinks, / And thoughtful Sense without Performance sinks."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1701

"He [Good King Bacchus] does the chaos of the head refine, / And atom-thoughts jump into words by wine"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1701

"Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns; / For all's condens'd before the flame returns; The fermentation's of so weak a matter, / The humid damps the fume, and runs it all to water."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: Tuesday, October 22, 1706

"Sometimes it is acted by the evil Spirit of general Vogue, and like a meer Possession 'tis hurry'd out of all manner of common Measures; to day it obeys the Course of things and submits to Causes and Consequences; to morrow it suffers Violence from the Storms and Vapours of Human Fancy, operated...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1715

"THEN as to Correction, the Heart being hardned, as before, by Opinion and Practice, and especially in a Belief that he ought not to be corrected, the Rod of Correction has a different Effect; for as the Blow of a Stripe makes an Impression on the Heart of a Child, as stamping a Seal does upon th...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1719

"Discomposure of the Mind" must "be as great a Disability as that of the Body"

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1719

"At that very Word my Heart, as I thought, died within me, and I fell backwards upon the Side of my Bed where I sat, into the Cabbin."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

Date: 1719

"[M]y Heart was as it were dead within me, partly with Fright, partly with Horror of Mind and the Thoughts of what was yet before me."

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

preview | full record

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