Date: 1767
"Nature supplies the materials of his compositions; his senses are the under-workmen, while Imagination, like a masterly Architect, superintends and directs the whole. Or, to speak more properly, Imagination both supplies the materials, and executes the work, since it calls into being 'things tha...
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1767
"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its pla...
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1770
"Let him not intrude upon the company of men of science; but repose with his brethren Aquinas and Suarez, in the corner of some Gothic cloister, dark as his understanding, and cold as his heart."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1771, 1776
"Fain to implore the aid of Flattery's screen, / Even from thyself thy loathsome heart to hide, / (The mansion then no more of joy serene), / Where fear, distrust, malevolence, abide, / And impotent desire, and disappointed pride?"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1774
"Thus imagination is no unskilful architect; it collects and chuses the materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos, it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power, after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-pr...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1776
"Hence the strange parade he makes with regions, and recesses, hollow caverns, and private seats, wastes, and wildernesses, fruitful and cultivated tracks, words which, though they have a precise meaning as applied to country, have no definite signification as applied to mind."
preview | full record— Campbell, George (1719-1796)
Date: 1783
"At this window (as the wise man calls it) the soul is often seen in her genuine character, even when the porter below (I mean the tongue) is endeavouring to persuade us, that she is not within, that she is otherwise employed, or that she is quite a different person"
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"Does the human soul go up to the pia mater, as a housewife does to her garret, only at certain times? Or, if she makes it her place of abode, are there any corners of it which she is unacquainted with, or neglects to look into?'
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"In the places thus appropriated to the artificial Memory (supposing them the apartments of the house) there would be moveables; as statues and pictures in one warlike weapons in another, tables and couches in a third: or, if they did not admit of such furniture, it would be easy for the orator t...
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)