Date: 1766
"YOU see already, my dear patron, by the date of my letter, that I am arrived at the place of my destination; but you cannot see all the charms which I find in it; to do this, you should be acquainted with the situation, and be able to read my heart. You ought, however, to read at least those of ...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776); with Rousseau, d'Alembert, and Walpole
Date: 1766
"They suppose the same domineering pride and ingratitude to be the basis of his character; but they are also willing to believe, that his brain has received a sensible shock, and that his judgment, set afloat, is carried to every side, as it is pushed by the current of his humours and of his pass...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776); with Rousseau, d'Alembert, and Walpole
Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Formerly my mind was quite a lodging-house for all ideas who chose to put up there, so that it was at the mercy of accident, for I had no fixed mind of my own. Now my mind is a house where, though the street rooms and the upper floors are open to strangers, yet there is always a settled family i...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"Only this more. The ideas--my lodgers--are of all sorts. Some, gentlemen of the law, who pay me a great deal more than others. Divines of all sorts have been with me, and have ever disturbed me. When I first took up house, Presbyterian ministers used to make me melancholy with dreary tones. Meth...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1766-1769, 1956
"This family! this landlord, let me say, or this landlady, as the mind and the soul are both she. I shall confuse myself with metaphor. Let me then have done with it."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1767
"He is now reduced to the greatest want and beggary, he is become a meer tabula rasa, a sheet of blank paper, a page of perfect inanity."
preview | full record— Campbell, Archibald (bap. 1724, d. 1780)
Date: 1767
His existence is now at last in no danger of comminution, but then his powers are absolutely gone and quite evaporated. In a word, he is as dry and empty as a beer barrel after it has been some time set a-broach to a drunken mob at a general election."
preview | full record— Campbell, Archibald (bap. 1724, d. 1780)
Date: 1767
"Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of n...
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1767
"The order of things is thereby reversed; reason is dethroned, and sense usurps the place of judgment."
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1767
"In order therefore to relish and to judge of the production of Genius and to Art, there must be an internal perceptive power, exquisitely sensible to all the impressions which such productions are capable of making on a susceptible mind."
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)