Date: 1775

"For this reason a bow of any kind, that has been bent, does not restore itself to the same form that it had before, but leans a little to the other, in consequence of the spheres of attraction and repulsion belonging to the several particles having been altered by the change of their situation. ...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"To the mere novice in philosophical investigations, it will appear impossible to reduce all the variety of thinking to so simple and uniform a process; but to the same person it would also appear impossible a priori, that all the varieties of language, as spoken by all the nations in the world, ...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"Also those phenomena in nature which depend upon gravity, electricity, &c. are no less various and complex; and the more we know of nature, the more particular facts, and particular laws, we are able to reduce to simple and general laws: insomuch that now it does not appear impossible, but that,...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"In the wildest flights of fancy, it is probable that no single idea occurs to us but such as had a connection with some other impression or idea, previously existing in the mind."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"To lessen this difficulty a little, let it be considered how exceedingly different, to the eye of the mind, as we may say, are our ideas of sensible things from any thing that could have been conjectured concerning their effect upon us."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"To account for the idea of time, it appears to me to be sufficient to attend to a few well known facts, viz. that impressions made by external objects remain a certain space of time in the mind, that this time is different according to the strength, and other circumstances of the impression, and...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"If I look upon a house, and then shut my eyes, the impression it has made upon my mind does not immediately vanish."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776, 1781, 1788-89

"At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid system of the Stoicks, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external, as things indifferent."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776

"Yet in such pursuits great moderation is requisite, lest the mind too freely rove, and idly indulge itself in the airy wilds of fancy, to the neglect of real science and useful improvement."

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)

Date: 1776

"In short, he ranges, with curious attention, through the wide regions of truth; noting the different steps, that lead to it, by converging lines, and carefully distinguishing the false lights of fancy or passion from the cooler investigations of the reasoning faculties."

— Berington, Joseph (1743-1827)