Date: 1764

"The painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman, attempt to operate upon the mind in different ways, and for different ends; and they succeed, according as they touch properly the strings of the human frame."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1767

"The period depends sometimes upon a fortunate accident encouraging its exertion, sometimes upon a variety of concurring causes stimulating its ardor, and sometimes upon that natural effervescence of mind (if we may thus express it) by which it bursts forth with irresistible energy, at different ...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Fancy, if not regulated by the dictates of impartial Judgment, is apt to mislead the mind and to throw glaring colours on objects that possess no intrinsic excellence."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"The mind in this case has recourse to and relies on its own fund."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Others however are more remote, and lie far beyond the reach of ordinary faculties; coming only within the verge of those few persons, whose minds are capacious enough to contain that prodigious croud of ideas, which an extensive observation and experience supply; whose understandings are penetr...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1770

"Some men are distinguished by an uncommon acuteness in discovering the characters of others: they seem to read the soul in the countenance, and with a single glance to penetrate the deepest recesses of the heart."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"Thus we talk metaphorically, when we speak of a warm imagination, a sound judgement, a tenacious memory, an enlarged understanding; these epithets being originally and properly expressive of the qualities of matter."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"Why should not our judgments concerning truth be acknowledged to result from a bias impressed upon the mind by its Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of society, our resentment of injury, our joy in the possession of good?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)