Date: 1764

"The painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman, attempt to operate upon the mind in different ways, and for different ends; and they succeed, according as they touch properly the strings of the human frame."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Thus colour must be in something coloured; figure in something figured; thought can only be in something that thinks; wisdom and virtue cannot exist but in some being that is wise and virtuous."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal without any of the mat...

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"They held, that all bodies continually send forth slender films or spectres from their surface, of such extreme subtilty, that they easily penetrate our gross bodies, or enter by the organs of sense, and stamp their image upon the mind."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Modern Philosophers, as well as the Peripatetics and Epicureans of old, have conceived, that external objects cannot be the immediate objects of our thought; that there must be some image of them in the mind itself, in which, as in a mirror, they are seen."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Language is the express image and picture of human thoughts; and, from the picture, we may often draw very certain conclusions with regard to the original."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"To this it is owing, that, in ancient languages, the word which denotes the soul, is that which properly signifies breath or air."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"He conjectured, that the soul is seated in a small gland in the brain, called the pineal gland: That there, as in her chamber of presence, she receives intelligence of every thing that affects the senses, by means of a subtile fluid contained in the nerves, called the animal spirits; and that sh...

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"When we imagine any thing, the very word leads us to think that these must be some image in the mind of the thing conceived."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"The contrary motives are here compared to the weights in the opposite scales of a balance; and there is not perhaps any instance that can be named of a more striking analogy between body and mind."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)