Date: 1783
"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1783
"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of...
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1784
"The Author of this little Essay, very philanthropically, but he fears, very vainly, wishes, that some much abler Chymist of this kind than himself, could once compose and exhibit such an attractive, and palatable preservative against all infection of the mind, as might be greedily purchased and ...
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1785
"One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for,human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead...
preview | full record— Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804)
Date: 1785
"To this it is owing, that, in ancient languages, the word which denotes the soul, is that which properly signifies breath or air."
preview | full record— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)
Date: 1785
"I saw in this nobleman the best dispositions and best principles; and I saw him, in my mind's eye, to be the representative of the ancient Boyds of Kilmarnock."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1786
"'Solitude,' added he one day, 'is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of s...
preview | full record— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)
Date: w. October 27, 1777, printed 1788
"In a man's letters, you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1788-89
The soul is "Like a man between sleeping and waking, her visions are turbid and confused, and the phantoms of a material night, continually glide before her drowsy eye."
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)
Date: 1788-89
"But on the latter system [Plato's], the soul is the connecting medium of an intelligible and sensible nature, the bright repository of all middle forms, and the vigilant eye of all cogitative reasons"
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)