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Date: August 27, 1751

"The painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1754

"This is the great intellectual province, wherein our minds range with much freedom, and often with exorbitant licence, in the pursuit of real or imaginary science."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

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Date: 1759

"His mighty mind travelled round the intellectual world; and, with a more than eagle's eye, saw, and has pointed out blank spaces, or dark spots in it, on which the human mind never shone."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

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Date: September 1, 1759.

"The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been o...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"When the senses are gently and naturally shut up, and the command over the body intermitted, as in sleep, if we think at all we are said to dream; and generally wander through airy tracks of thought, which have no agreement with each other, nor are at all corrected by the judgment."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

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Date: 1767

"Thus it appears to be in every respect a proper counterbalance to the RAMBLING and VOLATILE power of IMAGINATION. The one, perpetually attempting to soar, is apt to deviate into the mazes of error; while the other arrests the wanderer in its vagrant course, and compels it to follow the path of n...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

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Date: 1767

"Conscious of its native energy, it delights to expand its faculties by the most vigorous exertion, Ranging through the unbounded regions of nature and of art, it explores unbeaten tracks of thought, catches a glimpse of some objects which lie far beyond the sphere of ordinary observation, and ob...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

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Date: 1767

"A Writer however, of the kind last mentioned, instead of tracing the footsteps of his predecessors, will allow his imagination to range over the field of Invention, in quest of its materials; and, from the group of figures collected by it, will strike out a character like his own Genius, perfect...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

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Date: 1774

"Imagination is still more inventive in all its other operations. It can lead us from a perception that is present, to the view of many more, and carry us through extensive, distant, and untrodden fields of thought. It can dart in an instant, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to earth; it can...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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Date: 1774

"As acuteness of smell carries a dog along the path of the game for which he searches, and secures him against the danger of quitting it, upon another scent: so this happy structure of imagination leads the man of genius into those tracks where the proper ideas lurk, and not only enables him to d...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.