Date: 1751

"Another Source of mutual Misapprehension on this Subject hath been 'the Introduction of metaphorical Expressions instead of proper ones.' Nothing is so common among the Writers on Morality, as 'the Harmony of Virtue'—'the Proportion of Virtue.'"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1751

"They [sense, imagination, and passion] are no more than the several Species of simple Colours laid, as it were, upon the Pallet; which, variously combined and associated by the Hand of an experienced Master, would indeed call forth every striking Resemblance, every changeful Feature of the Heart...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: August 27, 1751

"When a number of distinct images are collected by these erratick and hasty surveys, the fancy is busied in arranging them; and combines them into pleasing pictures with more resemblance to the realities of life as experience advances, and new observations rectify the former."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1766

"If society be formed, by the communication of ideas and sentiments, speech, is, undoubtedly, its most essential and most graceful band, being, at once, the pencil of the mind, the image of its operations, and, the interpreter of the heart."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1766

"These three words denote, equally, an advantageous state, and agreeable situation; but that of happiness, marks, properly, the state of fortune, capable of dispensing pleasures, and placing them within our reach; that of felicity, expresses, particularly, the state of the heart; disposed to tast...

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1766

"'Love', designs on the imagination, the flattering idea of eternal happiness, in the entire and constant possession of the object we 'love'. 'Gallantry', fails not to paint there the agreeable image of a singular pleasure, in the enjoyment of the object we pursue; but, neither the one, nor, the ...

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)

Date: 1774

"I often paint you in my imagination, in your present lontananza, and, while I view you in the light of ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill-bred, with vulgar ...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1781

"Which, like a skilful artist, goes to work upon the materials furnished by the senses; comparing selecting, analysing, and abstracting; till by placing them in different points of view their fitness, relations, and dependencies are seen."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"But the difference is much greater between the ideas of sense, the materials upon which the mind first begins its work, and the truths produced by its operations, than between the rough marble, and the statue formed by the skill of PHIDIAS."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)