Date: 1757

"If we can direct the lights we derive from such exalted speculations, upon the humbler field of the imagination, whilst we investigate the springs and trace the course of our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on severer s...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"Now the imagination is the most extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impres...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"The mind of man has naturally a far greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce new images, we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagi...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"[T]he judgment is for the greater part employed in throwing stumbling blocks in the way of the imagination, in dissipating the scenes of enchantment, and in tying us down to the disagreeable yoke of our reason"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757, 1769

"The king of men to sudden rage resign'd, / At once, the empire of his mighty mind."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1757, 1769

"Banish the dire impression from my breast. / For still I see the monster, as he stood."

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1757, 1769

"As thus to touch his iron heart they try'd, / The Cyclops smiling, scornful thus reply'd:"

— Wilkie, William (1721-1772)

Date: 1757

"The term Taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate: the thing which we understand by it, is far from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757

"They who have not taken these methods, if their Taste decides quickly, it is always uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation that in a moment dispels all darkness from their minds."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1757-9

"'Tis said, when Japhet's Son began / To mould the Clay, and fashion Man, / He stole from every Beast a Part, / And fix'd the Lion in his Heart."

— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [Editor]