Date: 1767

"Very different ideas however are excited in the minds of some, from those excited in the minds of others, even by the first of these, which may be said to be the original fountain of our knowledge, though the ideas produced by it are conveyed by organs common to human nature; and still more diff...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"On the other hand, the too liberal use of IMAGERY even in Poetry (besides that obscurity which it occasions to the ordinary class of Readers, as well as that fatigue which the Imagination experiences from its excessive glare) so disgusts the mind with the perpetual labour of tracing relations an...

— 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...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1774

"Genius implies likewise activity of imagination. Whenever a fine imagination possesses healthful vigour, it will be continually starting hints, and pouring in conceptions upon the mind.

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"The largest river takes its rise from some small fountain; issuing from this, it rolls its streams over a long extent of country, and is enlarged during its course by the influx of many rivulets derived from springs no more considerable than its own, till at last it becomes an impassable torrent...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1783

"Some, indeed, there are, who, by a strength and dignity in their conceptions, and a current of high ideas that runs through their whole composition, preserve the reader's mind always in a tone nearly allied to the Sublime; for which reason they may, in a limited sense, merit the name of continue...

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

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

"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)