Date: 1767

"Ordinary minds seldom rise above the dull uniform tenor of common sentiments, like those animals that are condemned to creep on the ground all the days of their life; but the most lawless excursions of an original Genius, like the flight of an eagle, are towering, though devious; its path, as th...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Poetic Genius in particular cannot flourish either in uninterrupted SUNSHINE, or in continual SHADE. It languishes under the blazing ardor of a summer noon, as its buds are blasted by the damp fogs and chilling breath of a winter sky."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1770

"Let him not intrude upon the company of men of science; but repose with his brethren Aquinas and Suarez, in the corner of some Gothic cloister, dark as his understanding, and cold as his heart."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, / 'And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, / 'Henceforth no earthly hope with heaven shall share / 'This heart, where peace serenely shines at last."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The gloomy race / 'By Indolence and moping Fancy bred, / 'Fear, Discontent, Solicitude give place, / 'And Hope and Courage brighten in their stead, / 'While on the kindling soul her vital beams are shed."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as f...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Penetration implies such a force of imagination as leads to the comprehension and explication of a subject: brightness of imagination fits a man for adorning a subject. A penetrating mind emits the rays by which truth is discovered: a bright fancy supplies the colours by which beauty is produced."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1776

"The lights of the mind are, if I may so express myself, in an opposite situation to the lights of the body."

— Campbell, George (1719-1796)