Date: 1793
"It is curious to observe the first dawn of genius breaking on the mind. Sometimes a man of genius, in his first effusions, is so far from revealing his future powers, that, on the contrary, no reasonable hope can be formed of his success."
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: 1793
"In the violent struggle of his mind, he may give a wrong direction to his talents; as Swift, in two pindaric odes, which have been unfortunately preserved in his works."
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: 1793
"Milton had perhaps wandered in the fields of fancy, and consoled his blindness with listening to the voice of his nation, that was to have resounded with his name."
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: 1793
"To solace mental fatigue by the amusements of fancy, is no loss of time. Students know how often the eye is busied in wandering over the page, while the mind lies in torpid inactivity; they therefore compute their time, not by the hours consumed in study, but by the real acquisitions they obtain...
preview | full record— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)
Date: November 19, 1793
"The mind, freed from her weighty companion, roams at large through the regions of fancy; and at once conceives and invents, beautifies and illustrates, amplifies and adorns."
preview | full record— Boyd, Hugh (1746-1794)
Date: 1794
"At the same time that our young performer continues to play with great exactness this accustomed tune, she can bend her mind, and that intensely, on some other object, according with the fourth article of the preceding propositions."
preview | full record— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)
Date: 1794
"With shadowy trident how Volition guides, / Surge after surge, his intellectual tides; / Or, Queen of Sleep, Imagination roves / With frantic Sorrows, or delirious Loves."
preview | full record— Bilsborrow, Dewhurst (fl. 1794)
Date: 1794
"I shuddered at the possibility of his having overheard the words of my soliloquy. But this idea, alarming as it was, had not the power immediately to suspend the career of my reflections"
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)
Date: 1796
"He thought of his union with Antonia; he thought of the obstacles which might oppose his wishes; and a thousand changing visions floated before his fancy, sad 'tis true, but not unpleasing."
preview | full record— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)
Date: 1796
"As this last idea passed through his imagination, a blush spread itself over his cheek."
preview | full record— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)