Date: 1783

"If, therefore, you are well instructed in theology, the argument of every Sermon will be familiar to you; on every such argument your mind will be stored with a great variety of expression; you can never be at a loss for topicks; and your quotations will be no burden to your Memory"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"[W]hat Horace observes of words is equally true of thoughts ... every superfluity is lost, like water poured into a vessel already full."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"If the mind is not vacant, Attention will be painful, and interrupted, and the Memory slow to receive any durable impression"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"What toil and perseverance, in cultivating the bodily powers, must it require, to qualify the tumbler for those feats of activity, with which he astonishes mankind! [... ]Were we to take equal pains in the improvement of our intellectual and moral nature, which are surely not less susceptible of...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"These are some of the general heads, under which may be arranged the manifold treasures of human Memory."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1785

"The analogy between memory and a repository, and between remembering and retaining, is obvious and is to be found in all languages."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"In later ages, Des Cartes was the first that pointed out the road we ought to take in those dark regions [of the mind]."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"Thus colour must be in something coloured; figure in something figured; thought can only be in something that thinks; wisdom and virtue cannot exist but in some being that is wise and virtuous."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1785

"When we come to be instructed by Philosophers, we must bring the old light of common sense along with us, and by it judge of the new light which the Philosopher communicates to us."

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)