Date: 1765

"So through their importunity I went back again, but not believing that I should be delivered: for I feared their spirit was too full of opposition to the truth to let me go, unless I should in something or other dishonour my God, and wound my conscience."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

Date: 1767

"An original Author indeed will frequently be apt to exceed in the use of this ornament, by pouring forth such a blaze of imagery, as to dazzle and overpower the mental sight; the effect of which is, that his Writings become obscure, if not unintelligible to common Readers; just as the eye is for...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"That some of her stores are more readily found than others, being less hid from the eye of Fancy, and some of her features more easily hit, because more strongly marked."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"It will be very difficult therefore for their successors to select objects which the eye of Fancy hath never explored, and none but a Genius uncommonly original can hope to accomplish it."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1771

"Now as our Feet in vain venture to walk upon the River, till the Frost bind the Current, and harden the yielding Surface; so does the SOUL in vain seek to exert its higher Powers, the Powers I mean of REASON and INTELLECT, till IMAGINATION first fix the fluency of SENSE, and thus provide ...

— Harris, James (1709-1780)

Date: 1773

"Thus likewise, when we form to ourselves a notion of the soul, we ever represent it as a thin shade, or subtil matter; in short, as a corporeal being, if we form any image of it at all."

— Marat, Jean-Paul (1743-1793)

Date: 1774

"It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"No sooner does the imagination, in a moment of wandering, suggest any idea not conducive to the design, than the conception of this design breaks in of its own accord, and, like an antagonist muscle, counteracting the other association, draws us off to the view of a more proper idea."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Imagination must set all the ideas and all the analogies of things, which it collects, before the discerning eye of reason, and submit them absolutely to its sovereign decision."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"It is justly observed by Quintilian, that every fiction of the human fancy is approved in the moment of its production. The exertion of the mind which is requisite in forming it, is agreeable; and the face of novelty which infant conceptions wear, fails not to recommend them promiscuously, till ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)