Date: 1727

"Hence, thro' her nourish'd Powers, enlarged by Thee, / She soaring, spurns, with elevated Pride, / The tangling Mass of Cares, and low Desires, / That bind the fluttering Crowd; and, Angel-wing'd, / The Heights of Science and of Vertue gains, / Where all is calm and bright! with Nature round, / ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

"BUT yonder breathing Prospect bids the Muse / Throw all her Beauty forth, that Daubing all / Will be to what I gaze; for who can paint / Like Nature? Can Imagination boast / Amid his gay Creation Hues like Her's? / And can He mix them with that matchless Skill, / And lay them on so delicately sw...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1728

Exhausted Nature sinks a-while to Rest, / Still interrupted by disorder'd Dreams, / That o'er the sick Imagination rise, / And in black Colours paint the mimic Scene."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1737

"Whatever fancy paints, invention pours, / Judgment digests, the well tuned bosom feels, / Truth natural, moral, or divine, has taught, / The virtues dictate, or the Muses sing."

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"While there with thee the enchanted round I walk, / The regulated wild, gay Fancy then / Will tread in thought the groves of attic land; / Will from thy standard taste refine her own, / Correct her pencil to the purest truth / Of Nature, or, the unimpassion'd shades / Forsaking, raise it to the ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746

"For me, when I forget the darling theme, / Whether the blossom blows, the summer-ray / Russets the plain, inspiring Autumn gleams; / Or Winter rises in the blackening east; / Be my tongue mute, may fancy paint no more, / And, dead to joy, forget my heart to beat!"

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1754

"The scene of the mind, like a moving picture, must be governed with attention, that it may bring into our view the images we want, and as we want them. Otherwise ideas that are foreign to our actual train of thinking will frequently rush into our thoughts, and become objects of them whether we w...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"When they have really such ideas in their minds, they must remember too that figures and comparisons are varnish still. It must not be used to alter the intellectual picture, it must only serve to give a greater lustre, and to make it better seen."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1794

"If our recollection or imagination be not a repetition of animal movements, I ask, in my turn, What is it? You tell me it consists of images or pictures of things. Where is this extensive canvas hung up? or where are the numerous receptacles in which those are deposited? or to what else in the a...

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)