Date: Friday, June 27, 1712

"Since it is in the Power of the Imagination, when it is once Stocked with particular Ideas, to enlarge, compound, and vary them at her own Pleasure."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, July 2, 1712

"Our Reason can pursue a Particle of Matter through an infinite Variety of Divisions, but the Fancy soon loses sight of it, and feels in it self a kind of Chasm, that wants to be filled with Matter of a more sensible Bulk."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Wednesday, July 2, 1712

"Perhaps there may not be room in the Brain for such a variety of Impressions, or the Animal Spirits may be incapable of figuring them in such a manner, as is necessary to excite so very large or very minute Ideas."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"[Sight] fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas, converses with its Objects at the greatest Distance, and continues the longest in Action without being tired or satiated with its proper Enjoyments."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 1712

"For this Reason Sir Francis Bacon, in his Essay upon Health, has not thought it improper to prescribe to his Reader a Poem or a Prospect, where he particularly dissuades him from knotty and subtile Disquisitions, and advises him to pursue Studies that fill the Mind with splendid and illustrious ...

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: July 23, 1703; 1714

"Time, I daily find, blots out apace the little Stock of my Mind, and has disabled me from furnishing all that I would willingly contribute to the Memory of that Learned Man.."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1741, 1742, 1755

"Which they explained by a Bottle's being filled with Sea Water, that swimming there a while, on the Bottle's breaking, flowed in again, and mingled with the common Mass."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

Date: 1771

"He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes."

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: December 14, 1770; 1771

"He examines his own mind, and perceives there nothing of that divine inspiration, with which, he is told, so many others have been favoured. He never travelled to Heaven to gather new ideas; and he finds himself possessed of no other qualifications than what mere common sense and a plain underst...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)