page 1 of 2     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1670

"Thus, like a captive in an isle confined, / Man walks at large, a prisoner of the mind."

— Dryden, John (1631-1700)

preview | full record

Date: 1685

"For, as we see in Princes Pallaces, / How all the avenues, and passages / Are strictly guarded, to oppose the rude / Tumultuous entries of the Multitude: / Whilst civil persons, who have business, / Pass through the Guards, and dayly make address / To th'Princes ear: so all the Guards o'th' brai...

— Clark, William (fl. 1663-1685)

preview | full record

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"She had proceeded thus far in a maze of Thought, when she started to find her self so lost to her Reason, and would have trod back again that path of deluding Fancy."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1704

"The practitioners of this famous art proceed, in general, upon the following fundamental, that the corruption of the senses is the generation of the spirit; because the senses in men are so many avenues to the fort of reason, which, in this operation, is wholly blocked up."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

preview | full record

Date: 1709, 1810

"Yet the silly wand'ring mind, / Loth to be too much confin'd, / Roves and takes her daily tours, / Coasting round the narrow shores, / Narrow shores of flesh and sense, / Picking shells and pebbles thence: / Or she sits at fancy's door, / Calling shapes and shadows to her, / Foreign visits still...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

preview | full record

Date: Monday, December 17, 1711

"Now as to the peculiar Qualities of the Eye, that fine Part of our Constitution seems as much the Receptacle and Seat of our Passions, Appetites and Inclinations as the Mind it self; and at least it is the outward Portal to introduce them to the House within, or rather the common Thorough-fare t...

— Anonymous

preview | full record

Date: 1711

"The scorcht and pathless Desarts of the Brain, / Want proper Caves and Cells to entertain / A Crowd of airy Forms and long Ideal Train."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1711

"And reflecting on what is transacted within us, it seems to me a very diverting Scene to think when we strive to recollect something that does not then occur; how nimbly those volatil Messengers of ours will beat through all the Paths, and hunt every Enclosure of the Organ set aside for thinking...

— Mandeville, Bernard (bap. 1670, d. 1733)

preview | full record

Date: 1724

"For Nature by fix'd Laws has wisely join'd / The bright Ideas of the conscious Mind / To Motions of the liquid spirit'ous Train, / Thro' previous Traces of the humid Brain; / These, when the Soul by drowsy Sleep oppress'd / Into her private Cell retires to Rest, / Thro' beaten Paths their wand'r...

— Needler, Henry (1690-1718); Duncombe, William (1690-1769)

preview | full record

Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

preview | full record

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