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Date: April 26, 1695; 1708

"Meditating by one's self is like digging in the Mine; it often, perhaps, brings up maiden Earth, which never came near the Light before; but whether it contain any Metal in it, is never so well tried as in Conversation with a knowing judicious Friend, who carries about him the true Touch-stone, ...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

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Date: 1733-4

"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."

— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)

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Date: 1744, 1772, 1795

"Passion's fierce illapse / Rouzes the mind's whole fabric; with supplies / Of daily impulse keeps the elastic powers / Intensely poiz'd, and polishes anew / By that collision all the fine machine: / Else rust would rise, and foulness, by degrees / Incumbering, choak at last what heaven design'd ...

— Akenside, Mark (1720-1771)

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Date: 1759

"My soul with pleasure takes her flight, that thus / Faithful in death, I leave these cold remains / Near thy dear honour'd clay."

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)

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Date: 1759

"Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1760

"O happy stroke, that bursts the bonds of clay, / Darts through the rending gloom the blaze of day, / And wings the soul with boundless flight to soar, / Where dangers threat, and fears alarm no more."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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Date: January 1, 1779

"There [to Heaven's Regions] when the soul, in search of purer day, / Loos'd from mortality's impris'ning clay / Shall swifter than the forked lightning dart."

— Anstey, Christopher (1724-1805)

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Date: 1793

"To solace mental fatigue by the amusements of fancy, is no loss of time. Students know how often the eye is busied in wandering over the page, while the mind lies in torpid inactivity; they therefore compute their time, not by the hours consumed in study, but by the real acquisitions they obtain...

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

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