Date: 1770
"Some men are distinguished by an uncommon acuteness in discovering the characters of others: they seem to read the soul in the countenance, and with a single glance to penetrate the deepest recesses of the heart."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1770
"Thus we talk metaphorically, when we speak of a warm imagination, a sound judgement, a tenacious memory, an enlarged understanding; these epithets being originally and properly expressive of the qualities of matter."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1770
"Why should not our judgments concerning truth be acknowledged to result from a bias impressed upon the mind by its Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of society, our resentment of injury, our joy in the possession of good?"
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1770
"A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road."
preview | full record— Beattie, James (1735-1803)
Date: 1773
"But was it made for nothing else beside / Passions to draw, and Reason to be Guide? / Was so much Art employ'd to drag and drive / Nothing within the Vehicle alive? / No seated Mind that claims the moving Pew, / Master of Passions, and of Reason too?"
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
Date: 1773
"The grand Contrivance why so well equip / With strength of Passions, rul'd by Reason's Whip?"
preview | full record— Byrom, John (1692-1763)
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."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1774
"But in sleep it is otherwise; having, as much as possible, put our senses from their duty, having closed the eyes from seeing, and the ears, taste, and smelling, from their peculiar functions, and having diminished even the touch itself, by all the arts of softness, the imagination is then left ...
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1774
"As in madness, the senses, from struggling with the imagination, are at length forced to submit, so, in sleep, they seem for a while soothed into the like submission: the smallest violence exerted upon any one of them, however, rouzes all the rest in their mutual defence; and the imagination, th...
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)