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)

Date: 1777

"I mention not the graces of her form; yet they are such as would attract the admiration of those, by whom the beauties of her mind might not be understood. In one as well as the other, there is a remarkable conjunction of tenderness with dignity; but her beauty is of that sort, on which we cann...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"The consciousness of what I mean by this letter to reveal, hangs like guilt upon my mind; therefore it is that I have so long delayed writing."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"That they are commonly vanquished by an effort to vanquish them; and that the sinking under their pressure, is one of those diseases of the mind, which, like certain diseases of the body, the exercise of its better faculties will very soon remove."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"He felt the assiduity of my friendship, and I saw him grateful for its exertion; yet would the idea of being obliged, often rankle in his mind."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[H]er spirits droop more than her body; she is thoughtful and melancholy when she thinks she is not observed, and, what pleases me worse, affects to appear otherwise, when she is"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)