Date: 1725
"He must be a Master of the Science; and be able to lead a Reader, knowingly, thro’ that Labyrinth of the Passions, which fill the Heart of Man, and make him either a noble or a despicable Creature."
preview | full record— Gally, Henry (bap. 1696, d. 1769)
Date: 1762
"In the latter passage, the most striking circumstances are selected to fill the mind with the grand and terrible. The former is a collection of minute and low circumstances, which scatter the thought and make no impression."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"Grandeur and novelty fix the attention for a considerable time, excluding all other ideas; and the mind thus occupied feels no vacuity."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1762
"In such a state, the train of perceptions must not only be slow, but extremely uniform. Anger newly inflamed eagerly grasps its object, and leaves not a cranny in the mind for another thought than of revenge."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1779, 1781
"The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never...
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"Still, however, it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the Moon, he crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope and all the wonders which the telescope discovers"
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1779, 1781
"Whatever be his subject he never fails to fill the imagination."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1783
"If thoughts could occupy space, we might be tempted to think, that we had laid them up in certain cells or repositories, to remain there till we had occasion for them."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
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."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)