Date: 1748, 1777

"It [the imagination] can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person, together with all the surrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as existing at present, with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"Inference and reasoning concerning the operations of nature would, from that moment, be at an end; and the memory and senses remain the only canals, by which the knowledge of any real existence could possibly have access to the mind."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748, 1777

"They know, that a human body is a mighty complicated machine: That many secret powers lurk in it, which are altogether beyond our comprehension: That to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations: And that therefore the irregular events, which outwardly discover themselves, can be ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1748

"My bosom had been hitherto a stranger to such a flood of joy as now rushed upon it: My faculties were overborn by the tide"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748

"This observation, delivered with a profound sigh, made my heart throb with violence; a crowd of confused ideas rushed upon my imagination, which, while I endeavoured to unravel, my uncle perceived my absence of thought, and tapping me on the shoulder, said, "Oons! are you asleep, Rory!""

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748

"This first tumult subsiding, a crowd of flattering ideas rushed upon my imagination"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748

"I was utterly confounded at this sudden transition, which affected me more than any reverse I had formerly felt; and a crowd of incoherent ideas rushed so impetuously upon my imagination, that my reason could neither separate nor connect them;"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1748, 1777

"As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects; thoug...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)