Date: 1770

"Some men are distinguished by an uncommon acuteness in discovering the characters of others: they seem to read the soul in the countenance, and with a single glance to penetrate the deepest recesses of the heart."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"Thus we talk metaphorically, when we speak of a warm imagination, a sound judgement, a tenacious memory, an enlarged understanding; these epithets being originally and properly expressive of the qualities of matter."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"Why should not our judgments concerning truth be acknowledged to result from a bias impressed upon the mind by its Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of society, our resentment of injury, our joy in the possession of good?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

Epicurus "fancied, that an infinite multitude of subtle images; some flowing from bodies, some formed in the air of their own accord, and others made up of different things variously combined, are always moving up and down around us: and that these images, being of extreme fineness, penetrate our...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The want of air and exercise, with interrupted digestion, unhinges the bodily frame: and the mind, long and violently exerted in one direction, like a bow long bent, loses its elasticity, and, unable to recover itself, remains stupidly fixed in the same distorted posture"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

Some philosophers "think, that the brains of old men, grown callous by length of time, are, like hard wax, equally tenacious of old impressions, and unsusceptible of new."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)