Date: 1767

"Imagination therefore being that faculty which lays the foundation of all our knowledge, by collecting and treasuring up in the repository of the memory those materials on which Judgment is afterwards to work, and being peculiarly adapted to the gay, delightful, vacant season of childhood and yo...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Others however are more remote, and lie far beyond the reach of ordinary faculties; coming only within the verge of those few persons, whose minds are capacious enough to contain that prodigious croud of ideas, which an extensive observation and experience supply; whose understandings are penetr...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"A Poet, on the other hand, who is possessed of original Genius, feels in the strongest manner every impression made upon the mind, by the influence of external objects on the senses, or by reflection on those ideas which are treasured up in the repository of the memory, and is consequently quali...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Thus the Poet, having by the force of Imagination formed lively images of the objects he proposes to describe, thinks only of expressing his ideas in smooth and harmonious numbers; the Painter, having the same vivid conception of every object, is wholly intent on exhibiting a representation of t...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"Imagination is that faculty whereby the mind not only reflects on its own operations, but which assembles the various ideas conveyed to the understanding by the canal of sensation, and treasured up in the repository of the memory, compounding or disjoining them at pleasure; and which, by its pla...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

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: 1774

"It is enraptured by every striking form, it fills the soul with high enthusiasm, it sets the fancy on fire, it pushes it forward with impetuosity, renders all its conceptions glowing, and bestows a freedom and becoming negligence on its productions."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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)

Date: December 10, 1774; 1775

"A mind enriched by an assemblage of all the treasures of antient and modern Art, will be more elevated and fruitful in resources in proportion to the number of ideas which have been carefully collected and thoroughly digested."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)