Date: 1754
"But yet so difficult is the intellectual commerce, so narrow the intellectual fund, that the wisest men are frequently obliged to employ their money like counters, and their counters like money, in one case, however, without loss, in the other without fraud. We may be said to do the first, that ...
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
Date: 1759
"That is, let not great Examples, or Authorities, browbeat thy Reason into too great a diffidence of thyself: Thyself so reverence as to prefer the native growth of thy own mind to the richest import from abroad; such borrowed riches make us poor."
preview | full record— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)
Date: 1762
"The pleasure of a train of ideas, is the most remarkable in a reverie; especially where the imagination interposes, and is active in coining new ideas, which is done with wonderful facility."
preview | full record— Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782)
Date: 1785
"To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong: it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships, to weigh a guinea. I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his ...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)