Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour"

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"There is in the human mind a strong propensity to make excursions; which may naturally be expected to exert itself most in those who have the greatest quickness and compass of imagination."

— 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: 1782

"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"Were I poetically turned--what a glorious field for fancy flights--such as the blue-eyed Goddess with her flying carr--her doves and sparrows, &c. &c.--Alas! my imagination is as barren as the desert sands of Arabia."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1783

"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1785

"[W]hen the mind is absent, and the thoughts are wandering to something else than what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable"

— Paley, William (1743-1805)

Date: 1785

"BOSWELL. 'But, sir,'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man will naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that ma...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)