Date: 1783

"Besides, when the senses have nothing to employ them, the mind is left (if I may so speak) a prey to its own thoughts; the Imagination becomes unmanageable; the nerves lose their wonted vigour"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"For although words and thoughts are different things (as appears from this, that deaf men think, who know nothing of words) yet words are, as it were, the dress, or the guise, in which our thoughts present themselves"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"At this window (as the wise man calls it) the soul is often seen in her genuine character, even when the porter below (I mean the tongue) is endeavouring to persuade us, that she is not within, that she is otherwise employed, or that she is quite a different person"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"That 'quickness in turning,' which the poet justly imagines to be essential to fine eyes, betokens in the mind a capacity of passing readily from one thought to another; an agreeable talent, when accompanied with good sense; and just the reverse of sullenness, inattention, and stupidity"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"And the impression that such things [overlong parodies], when long continued, leave on the mind, is by no means desirable."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"For the passions and imagination mutually affect each other; and the same rules will serve for the government of both."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The fruits of Sobriety are health, gladness, governable passions, clear discernment, rectitude of opinion, the esteem of others, and long life; which, with an approving conscience, are the greatest blessings here below, and, in all common cases, an effectual security against a diseased imaginati...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"I should not do justice to my subject, if I did not recommend moderate application to the studious in general, and to those of them chiefly whose fancy has become ungovernable from a depression of mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"I shall only remark, that too much study will in time shatter the strongest nerves, and make the soul a prey to melancholy. "

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The want of air and exercise, with interrupted digestion, unhinges the bodily frame: and the mind, long and violently exerted in one direction, like a bow long bent, loses its elasticity, and, unable to recover itself, remains stupidly fixed in the same distorted posture"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)