Date: September 10, 1726

"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Now, according to my supposition, there being no active intelligent Being, who, by his Presence and Superintendency, governs and directs the Course of those vagabond Images, every thing in the Brain resembles the fortuitous concourse of Atoms."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"Two Images meet, and unite to each other; these two meeting with a third, it unites to them in the same manner: and this Meeting and Union continuing for some time, at last occasions a most monstrous Aggregation, very like the Chaos of the Poet, where 'Frigida cum calidis pugnant, humentia sicci...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 10, 1726

"These united Images do sometimes separate from each other with the same facility they had joined, just like the fashionable way of marrying among the Quality; at other times, they maintain themselves in their Union, like poor Folks, without ever getting asunder; especially when this Union is the...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"This Train of Images continually revolv'd in our young Parson's Brain; and to preserve them from being jostled out by any intruding Foreigners, who might dispossess the Original Orthodox Inhabitants, the first Link of the Chain was rivetted by Pride, and the two last closed up by those two insep...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: September 17, 1726

"I Need not expatiate upon other Characters; for I have too good an Opinion of your Readers, to doubt of their beginning now to be sensible that most Men speak and act but from a fortuitous Concourse of Images, or a Train of them stored up in the Brain."

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: April 30, 1730

"The spirit of the brain, distilled by the heat of the imagination, like some chemical preparations, when exposed to the air, is apt to smoke, to take fire, to crack, and bounce, to the no small disturbance of the neighbourhood."

— Richard Russel and John Martyn

Date: April 30, 1730

"Nay, the very insipid phlegm, and even the caput mortuum of the brain, after this chemical operation, being mixed with ink, and spred upon paper, have the same combustible, noisy qualities, with the spirits themselves."

— Richard Russel and John Martyn

Date: February 4, 1752

"When we are employed in reading a great and good Author, we ought to consider ourselves as searching after Treasures, which, if well and regularly laid up in the Mind, will be of use to us on sundry Occasions in our Lives."

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: Saturday, Aug. 3, 1754; 1756

"The use of these kind of Figures in Tragedy should be as free and bold as possible, and with Respect to Expression, no other Regard is to be paid to it, than to chuse such Words as may be most significantly picturesque, in order to have the more lively Effect on the Imagination, the Passions bei...

— Murphy, Arthur (1727-1805)