Date: 1774

"It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"No sooner does the imagination, in a moment of wandering, suggest any idea not conducive to the design, than the conception of this design breaks in of its own accord, and, like an antagonist muscle, counteracting the other association, draws us off to the view of a more proper idea."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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 this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)