Date: 1783

"[W]hat Horace observes of words is equally true of thoughts ... every superfluity is lost, like water poured into a vessel already full."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"If the mind is not vacant, Attention will be painful, and interrupted, and the Memory slow to receive any durable impression"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"These are some of the general heads, under which may be arranged the manifold treasures of human Memory."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1784

"But when the English, (for though the Portuguese and Spaniards had transported Africans more early to their American settlements; yet Hawkins, an Englishman, is said first to have given occasion for the present inhuman trade) a nation most highly favoured of liberty, is viewed as taking the lead...

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1784

"It is said of negroes, that their brain is blackish, and the glandula pinealis wholly black; a remark of which the Cartesian, with his audience-hall of perception, might make much."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1784

"And hence it will follow, that with the foregoing exceptions, we may, among Europeans, bring genius to actual admeasurement, and determine its degrees by the size of the possessor's head, just as an exciseman gauges a beer barrel."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1784

"The truth is, a depth of cunning that enables them to over-reach, conceal, deceive, is the only province of the mind left for them, as slaves, to occupy."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)

Date: 1784

"In general the faculties of the mind must be expanded to a certain degree, before religion will take root, or flourish among a people; and a certain proportion of civil liberty is necessary, on which to found that expansion of the mind, which moral or religious liberty requires."

— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)