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

"It is this that puts it in the power of genius to show itself: without this, its finest conceptions would perish, like an infant in the womb; without this, the brightest imagination would be like a vigorous mind confined in a lame or paralytic body."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Many people lose a great deal of time by reading: for they read frivolous and idle books, such as the absurd romances of the two last centuries; where characters, that never existed, are insipidly displayed, and sentiments that were never felt, pompously described: the Oriental ravings and extra...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1775

"[T]here may be a farther difference in the constitution of the nerves belonging to the different senses, or there may be so many circumstances that affect or modify their vibrations, that they may be as distinguishable from one another, as different human voices sounding the same note; and proba...

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1775

"To lessen this difficulty a little, let it be considered how exceedingly different, to the eye of the mind, as we may say, are our ideas of sensible things from any thing that could have been conjectured concerning their effect upon us."

— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)

Date: 1776-1789

"In the same manner [says Longinus] as some children always remain pigmies, whose infant limbs have been too closely confined; thus our tender minds, fettered by the prejudices and habits of a just servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"The exercises of the body succeeded to those of the mind; and Alexander, who was tall, active, and robust, surpassed most of his equals in the gymnastic arts"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1778

"A thirst for knowledge, which can never be gratified, would not have been implanted; a mind which was to be chained to the earth, would never have been bent on the skies"

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)

Date: 1778

"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: April, 1778

"A Hypochondriack Preacher, would, I am sensible, be an anomalous character; for whatever part of his sermon should appear not quite intelligible, or at all unpleasant to his auditors, they might very fairly, though perhaps not very justly impute to the gloomy disease of his mind."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)