Date: 1774

"Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as f...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"It is only judgment constantly exerting itself along with fancy, and often checking it and examining its ideas, that produces by degrees a habit of correctness in thinking, and enures the mind to move straight forward to the end proposed, without declining into the byepaths which run off on both...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Association could not recal the idea of the design, in order to bring back fancy when it has wandered from it, if judgment did not inform us that it had wandered, by perceiving the tendency of the ideas which it has suggested. The finest imagination, totally destitute of assistance from judgment...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Fancy throws out both the worthless earth and the rich ore; judgment, like a skilful refiner, distinguishes the one from the other, and purifies the gold contained in the latter, from the dross with which it is intermingled."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Were reason only slow in her determinations, in comparison with the quickness with which fancy conceives, like Una's dwarf, lagging behind her far away, even this would greatly impede the work of genius, retard its progress, or stop it altogether by constantly curbing the impetuosity of fancy."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"The largest river takes its rise from some small fountain; issuing from this, it rolls its streams over a long extent of country, and is enlarged during its course by the influx of many rivulets derived from springs no more considerable than its own, till at last it becomes an impassable torrent...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"In this manner, as a master-builder has his materials prepared by inferiour workmen, or as a history painter is provided with his colours by the labour of others, so the faculty of invention often receives the entire ideas which it exhibits, from the inferiour faculties, and employs itself only...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"If we lose sight altogether of the beaten road of memory, we shall be in danger of missing our way in the winding paths of imagination. So bold an adventurer will come at last to regions inhabited only by monsters."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)