page 21 of 22     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1850

"Behold an emblem of our human mind / Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home, / Yet, like to eddying balls of foam / Within this whirlpool, they each other chase / Round and round, and neither find / An outlet nor a resting-place!"

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

preview | full record

Date: 1855

"This is the tasteless water of souls .... this the true sustenance."

— Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)

preview | full record

Date: 1868

"And images, that, in the musing mind, / As in a placid lake, lie mirrored and defined, / If ruffling winds along the surface stray, / Scatter'd and broken, pass like rack away"

— Lyte, Henry Francis (1793-1847)

preview | full record

Date: 1868

"Over me the billows roll, / Swallow up my sinking soul."

— Wesley, John and Charles

preview | full record

Date: April 26 1870

"For is there hue or shape defin'd / In Jenny's desecrated mind, / Where all contagious currents meet, / A Lethe of the middle street?"

— Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882)

preview | full record

Date: 1891

"So those high orthodoxies came to be / Quick seeds in me of heterodox opinion, / And, ere I wist, my thoughts were all at sea, / And drifted, holden by no wise dominion."

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

preview | full record

Date: 1891

"In him there was a faith serene and strong, / In me an unrest, like the rush of water"

— Smith, Walter Chalmers (1824-1908)

preview | full record

Date: 1893

"Thy mind is like a crystal brook / Wherein clean creatures live at ease / In sun-bright waves or shady nook."

— Gilder, Richard Watson (1844-1809)

preview | full record

Date: 1903

"When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of the brimming mind."

— Wickham, E. C. (1834-1910); Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BC - 8 BC)

preview | full record

Date: 1922

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

— Hughes, Langston (1902-1967))

preview | full record

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