Date: 1760-7
"But here, you must distinguish--the thought floated only in Dr. Slop's mind, without sail or ballast to it, as a simple proposition; millions of which, as your worship knows, are every day swiming quietly in the middle of the thin juice of a man's understanding, without being carried backwards o...
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"A mind thus sunk for a while below its natural standard, is qualified for stronger flights, as those first retire who would spring forward with greater vigour"
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1765, 1770
"Passions, and snow balls each by motion swell, / And Kitty finds her little heart rebel; / Full of desires she sighs for this, and that, / Her heart for ev'ry man goes pit-a-pat."
preview | full record— Thompson, Edward (1738-1786)
Date: 1768
"When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights; and having taken a few turns in it, come back strengthen'd and refresh'd."
preview | full record— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)
Date: 1755, 1771
"Tasteless of all that virtue gives to please, / For thought too active, and too mad for ease, / From wish to wish in life's mad vortex toss'd, / For ever struggling, and for ever lost; / He scorns religion, though her seraphs call, / And lives in rapture, or not lives at all."
preview | full record— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)
Date: 1774
"There is in the human mind a strong propensity to make excursions; which may naturally be expected to exert itself most in those who have the greatest quickness and compass of imagination."
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1774
"Were reason only slow in her determinations, in comparison with the quickness with which fancy conceives, like Una's dwarf, lagging behind her far away, even this would greatly impede the work of genius, retard its progress, or stop it altogether by constantly curbing the impetuosity of fancy."
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1775
"What fancied zone can circumscribe the Soul, / Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, / By Reason's light on Resolution's wings, / Spite of her frail / companion, dauntless goes / O'er Libya's deserts and through Zembla's snows? "
preview | full record— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Date: 1777
"But the heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"At present in my brain there floats / A thousand parti-colored motes; / From which, if time would but permit, / I might sift some sparks of wit."
preview | full record— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)