Date: 1774

"In this manner, as a master-builder has his materials prepared by inferiour workmen, or as a history painter is provided with his colours by the labour of others, so the faculty of invention often receives the entire ideas which it exhibits, from the inferiour faculties, and employs itself only...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Bring us to a place where we have formerly been, or only speak of it, immediately ideas of persons whom we have seen, of conversations in which we have been engaged, of actions which we have done, or of scenes which we have witnessed, in that place or near it, croud into our mind."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"The imagination resembles a person attached to home, who cannot without reluctance undertake a long journey, but can with pleasure make short excursions, returning home from each, and thence setting out anew."

— 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: 1774

"Sweet peace of mind! seraphic guest! / How long thy absence shall I mourn?"

— Blacklock, Thomas (1721-1791)

Date: 1776

"These two qualities therefore, probability and plausibility, (if I may be indulged a little in the allegoric style) I shall call Sister-graces, daughters of the same father Experience, who is the progeny of Memory, the first-born and heir of Sense. These daughters Experience had by different mot...

— Campbell, George (1719-1796)

Date: 1777

"I retire to the family of my own thoughts, and find them in weeds of sorrow."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"There is a certain kind of trifling, in which a mind not much at ease can sometimes indulge itself. One feels an escape, as it were, from the heart, and is fain to take up with lighter company. It is like the theft of a truant boy, who goes to play for a few minutes while his master is asleep, a...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1781

"I have been speaking hitherto of a morning saunter; for in the evening there generally is, on St. Mark's Place, such a mixed multitude of Jews, Turks, and Christians; lawyers, knaves, and pickpockets; mountebanks, old women, and physicians; women of quality with masks; strumpets barefaced; and, ...

— Moore, John (1729-1802)

Date: 1783

"But it is urged, that in sleep, the soul is passive, and haunted by visions, which she would gladly get rid of if she could"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)