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...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"And yet I wish--Oh! my friend, 'tis like drawing a curtain before my heart--only to taste this felicity, and die and expiate my crimes.--My crimes!"

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774

"While awake, and in health, this busy principle [the imagination] cannot much delude us: it may build castles in the air, and raise a thousand phantoms before us; but we have every one of the senses alive, to bear testimony to its falsehood."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1774

"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...

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

Date: 1775

"Momus well wished a window in every man's breast. Physiognomists pretend they can take a peep through the features of the face; but this is too abstruse a science to answer the general purposes of life; besides that education may render such knowledge doubtful, as in the case of Socrates."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1775

One may carry with him "all the flimsy furniture of a country Miss's brain"

— Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816)

Date: 1776

"But the greatest happiness of the greatest number requires, that they should be not only imagined but proved: and this they shall now be, in so far as natural probability, aided by whatever support it may be thought to receive from the character of the narrator, can gain credence, for the indica...

— Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832)

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."

— Campbell, George (1719-1796)

Date: 1776

"Being chosen by Vulcan, Neptune and Minerva, to give his judgment concerning their works, he blamed them all; Neptune for not making his bull with horns before his eyes; Minerva for building a house that could not be removed in case of bad neighbours; and Vulcan for making a man without a window...

— Noorthouck, John (1746?-1816)