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Date: Saturday, November 17, 1750

"[F]or most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them, roll down any torrent of custom in which they happen to be caught, or bend to any importunity that bears hard against them."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Tuesday, November 27, 1750

"Being accustomed to give the future full power over my mind, and to start away from the scene before me to some expected enjoyment, I deliver up myself to the tyranny of every desire which fancy suggests, and long for a thousand things which I am unable to procure."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Saturday, April 14, 1750

"He therefore that would govern his actions by the laws of virtue, must regulate his thoughts by those of reason; he must keep guilt from the recesses of his heart, and remember that the pleasures of fancy, and the emotions of desire, are more dangerous as they are more hidden, since they escape ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: Saturday, November 3, 1750

"When we have heated our zeal in a cause, and elated our confidence with success, we are naturally inclined to persue the same train of reasoning, to establish some collateral truth, to remove some adjacent difficulty, and to take in the whole comprehension of our system. As a prince in the ardou...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1751, 1777

"The happiness of mankind, the order of society, the harmony of families, the mutual support of friends, are always considered as the result of their gentle dominion over the breasts of men."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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Date: 1751, 1777

"Love itself, which can subsist under treachery, ingratitude, malice, and infidelity, is immediately extinguished by it, when perceived and acknowledged; nor are deformity and old age more fatal to the dominion of that passion."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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Date: 1751, 1777

"Another spring of our constitution, that brings a great addition of force to moral sentiment, is, the love of fame; which rules, with such uncontrolled authority, in all generous minds, and is often the grand object of all their designs and undertakings."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

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Date: 1751

"The imagination is thereby kept within bounds, and under due subjection to sense and reason."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

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Date: 1751

"We first consider the nature of that act of the mind, which is termed belief; of which the immediate foundation is the testimony of our senses."

— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)

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Date: 1751

"It remains, therefore, that the motions performed by us, in consequence of an irritation, are owing to the original constitution of our frame, and law of union established by the all-wise Creator between the soul and body, whereby the former, immediately and without any exercise of reason, endea...

— Whytt, Robert (1714-1766)

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