Date: 1783

"That 'quickness in turning,' which the poet justly imagines to be essential to fine eyes, betokens in the mind a capacity of passing readily from one thought to another; an agreeable talent, when accompanied with good sense; and just the reverse of sullenness, inattention, and stupidity"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"And the impression that such things [overlong parodies], when long continued, leave on the mind, is by no means desirable."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"For the passions and imagination mutually affect each other; and the same rules will serve for the government of both."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imaginati...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"I should not do justice to my subject, if I did not recommend moderate application to the studious in general, and to those of them chiefly whose fancy has become ungovernable from a depression of mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"I shall only remark, that too much study will in time shatter the strongest nerves, and make the soul a prey to melancholy. "

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The want of air and exercise, with interrupted digestion, unhinges the bodily frame: and the mind, long and violently exerted in one direction, like a bow long bent, loses its elasticity, and, unable to recover itself, remains stupidly fixed in the same distorted posture"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"If thoughts could occupy space, we might be tempted to think, that we had laid them up in certain cells or repositories, to remain there till we had occasion for them."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"To account for this, and other phenomena of Memory, by intermediate causes, many authors, both antient and modern, were fain to suppose, that every thing perceived by us, whether a thought of the mind, or an external object, every thing, in a word, that we remember, makes upon the brain a certai...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"When the brain itself is disordered, by disease, by drunkenness, or by other accidents, these philosophers are of opinion, that the impressions are disfigured, or instantly erased, or not at all received; in which case, there is either no remembrance, or a confused one."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)