Dave Lull alerts me to The Mind is a Metaphor database, “an evolving work of reference, an ever more interactive, more solidly constructed collection of mental metaphorics,” as it assembler and taxonomizer Brad Pasanek of the University of Virginia describes it. “This collection of eighteenth-century metaphors of mind serves as the basis for a scholarly study of the metaphors and root-images appealed to by the novelists, poets, dramatists, essayists, philosophers, belle-lettrists, preachers, and pamphleteers of the long eighteenth century. While the database does include metaphors from classical sources, from Shakespeare and Milton, from the King James Bible, and from more recent texts, it does not pretend to any depth or density of coverage in literature other than that of the British eighteenth century.” Next time you’re in search of an eighteenth-century metaphor, browse on by here…

A dry gleam of light is the wisest and best soul. —Heraklitus

When a human embryo is seven weeks old, / the brain shines through its forehead, a cloud / of light, belly-deep and breathing, / the whole, luminous mass cabled and alone. —Sam Witt

Curiosity is the thirst of the soul; it inflames and torments us, and makes us taste every thing with joy, however otherwise insipid, by which it may be quenched. —Samuel Johnson

A beauteous face may be the index of a beauteous mind. —James Miller