Date: 1741

"An active Fancy readily wanders over a multitude of objects, and is continually entertaining itself with new flying Images; it runs thro' a Number of new Scenes or new Pages with pleasure, but without due Attention, and seldom suffers itself to dwell long enough upon any one of them to make a de...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Where the Memory has been almost constantly employing itself in scraping together new Acquirements, and where there has not been a Judgment sufficient to distinguish what Things were fit to be recommended and treasured up in the Memory, and what things were idle, useless or needless, the Mind ha...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Whatsoever, saith he, old Time with his huge Drag-Net, has convey'd down to us along the Stream of Ages, whether it be Shells or Shell-Fish, Jewels or Pebbles, Sticks or Straws, Sea-Weeds or Mud, these are the Ancients, these are the Fathers. The Case is much the same with the memorial Possessio...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"A few useful Things perhaps, mixed and confounded with many Trifles and all manner of Rubbish fill up their Memories, and compose their intellectual Possessions. 'Tis a great Happiness therefore to distinguish things aright, and to lay up nothing in the Memory but what has some just Value in it,...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Whatsoever Improvements arise to the Mind of Man from the wise Exercise of his own reasoning Powers, these may be called his proper Manufactures; and whatsoever he borrows from Abroad these may be termed his foreign Treasures: both together make a wealthy and happy Mind."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"What an unknown and unspeakable Happiness would it be to a Man of Judgment, and who is engaged in the Pursuit of Knowledge, if he had but a Power of stamping all his own best Sentiments upon his Memory in some indelible Characters; and if he could but imprint every valuable Paragraph and Sentime...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"But what Part of the Brain that is, wherein the Images of Things lie treasured up, is very hard for us to determine with Certainty. It is most probable that those very Fibres, Pores or Traces of the Brain, which assist at the first Idea or Perception of any Object, are the fame which assist also...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"So for Instance, in Children; they perceive and forget a hundred Things in an Hour; the Brain is so soft that it receives immediately all Impressions like Water or liquid Mud, and retains scarce any of them: All the Traces, Forms or Images which are drawn there, are immediately effaced or closed...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"On the contrary, in old Age, Men have a very feeble Remembrance of Things that were done of late, i.e. the same Day or Week or Year; the Brain is grown so hard that the present Images or Strokes make little or no Impression, and therefore they immediately vanish."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Prisco in his seventy eighth Year will tell long Stories of Things done when he was in the Battle at the Boyne almost fifty Years ago, and when he studied at Oxford seven Years before; for those Impressions were made when the Brain was more susceptive of them; they have been deeply engraven at t...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)