Date: 1760, 1850

"Yet still in fancy's painted cells / The soul-inflaming image dwells."

— Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754)

Date: 1764

Perception is "a kind of drama, wherein some things are performed behind the scenes, others are represented to the mind in different scenes, one succeeding the another"

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1765

"O ye pure inmates of the gentle breast, / Truth, Freedom, Love, O where is your abode?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1767

"Imagination therefore being that faculty which lays the foundation of all our knowledge, by collecting and treasuring up in the repository of the memory those materials on which Judgment is afterwards to work, and being peculiarly adapted to the gay, delightful, vacant season of childhood and yo...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"He has nothing to do but to give scope to the excursions of this faculty, which, by its active and creative power, exploring every recess of thought, will supply an inexhaustible variety of striking incidents."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Nature supplies the materials of his compositions; his senses are the under-workmen, while Imagination, like a masterly Architect, superintends and directs the whole. Or, to speak more properly, Imagination both supplies the materials, and executes the work, since it calls into being 'things tha...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its pla...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1770

"Let him not intrude upon the company of men of science; but repose with his brethren Aquinas and Suarez, in the corner of some Gothic cloister, dark as his understanding, and cold as his heart."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"Fain to implore the aid of Flattery's screen, / Even from thyself thy loathsome heart to hide, / (The mansion then no more of joy serene), / Where fear, distrust, malevolence, abide, / And impotent desire, and disappointed pride?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"Thus imagination is no unskilful architect; it collects and chuses the materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos, it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power, after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-pr...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)