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?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"The captious turn of an habitual wrangler deadens the understanding, sours the temper, and hardens the heart: by rendering the mind suspicious, and attentive to trifles, it weakens the sagacity of instinct, and extinguishes the fire of imagination; it transforms conversation into, a state of war...

— 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."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: w. 1767, dated 1773 [unpublished in period]

"To show that all inferences of reason are false or uncertain, and that the understanding acting alone does entirely subvert itself, and prove by argument that by argument nothing can be proved, he has contrived a puppet of mushrooms, cork, cobwebs, gossamer, and other fungous and flimsy material...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1784

"The Author of this little Essay, very philanthropically, but he fears, very vainly, wishes, that some much abler Chymist of this kind than himself, could once compose and exhibit such an attractive, and palatable preservative against all infection of the mind, as might be greedily purchased and ...

— Anonymous