Date: 1764
"Such principles are parts of our constitution, no less than the power of thinking: reason can neither make nor destroy them; nor can it do any thing without them: it is like a telescope, which may help a man to see farther, who hath eyes; but without eyes, a telescope shows nothing at all."
preview | full record— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
Date: 1768
"How the history of Utopia holds up in the mirror of fancy, the picture of a well policied state, its arts, its laws, and government?"
preview | full record— Wynne, Edward (1734-1784)
Date: 1770
"A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: September, 1770
"This double feeling is of various kinds and various degrees; some minds receiving a colour from the objects around them, like the effects of the sun beams playing thro' a prism; and others, like the cameleon, having no colours of their own, take just the colours of what chances to be nearest them."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1774
"Like a mirrour, it [memory] reflects faithful images of the objects formerly perceived by us, but can exhibit no form with which it is not in this manner supplied. It is in its nature a mere copier; it preserves scrupulously the very position and arrangement of the original sensations, and gives...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1774
"A strong mind sees things in their true proportions; a weak one views them through a magnifying medium, which, like the microscope, makes an elephant of a flea: magnifies all little objects, but cannot receive great ones."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"He magnifies all her real perfections in his imagination, and is either blind to her failings, or converts them into beauties."
preview | full record— Gregory, John (1724-1773)
Date: 1774-1781
"When I am purified by the light of heaven my soul will become the mirrour of the world, in which I shall discern all abstruse secrets."
preview | full record— Warton, Thomas, the younger (1728-1790)
Date: 1775-7
"It was this creature which confirmed me in the belief, that the partition betwixt instinct and reason was totally transparent; and that the animal and rational saw through very similar mirrors."
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)