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Date: 1636

"A man's heart is like those two-faced pictures: if you look one way towards one side of them, you shall see nothing but some horrid shape of a devil, or the like; but go to the other side and look again, and you shall see the picture of an angel or of some beautiful woman, &c."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

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Date: 1636

"So some have looked over their hearts by signs at one time, and have to their thinking found nothing but hypocrisy, unbelief, hardness, self-seeking; but not long after, examining their hearts again by the same signs, they have espied the image of God drawn fairly upon the table of their hearts."

— Goodwin, Thomas (1600-1680)

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Date: 1637

"Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the ...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1637

"Their [philosopher's] sole reason for positing such images was that they saw how easily a picture can stimulate our mind to conceive the objects depicted in it, and so it seemed to them that, in the same way, the mind must be stimulated, by little pictures formed in our head, to conceive the obj...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1667

"From Sons has made you Lords of th' Earth, / And on yours stampt the Portrait of His minde."

— Woodford, Samuel (1636-1700)

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Date: 1669

"Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait."

— Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)

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Date: 1671

"Fancy rough-draws, but judgement smooths and finishes."

— Shadwell, Thomas (1642-1692)

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Date: 1681

"That, for all furniture, you'l find / Only your Picture in my Mind."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

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Date: 1681

"For thou alone to people me, / Art grown a num'rous Colony; / And a Collection choicer far / Then or White-hall's, or Mantua's were."

— Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678)

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Date: 1684

"For certainly there must be some change in our mind when we have some thoughts and then others, and, in fact, ideas of things we are not actually thinking about are in our minds as the shape of Hercules is in rough marble."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

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