Date: August 27, 1751

"When a number of distinct images are collected by these erratick and hasty surveys, the fancy is busied in arranging them; and combines them into pleasing pictures with more resemblance to the realities of life as experience advances, and new observations rectify the former."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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)

Date: 1752

"What a Happiness have you painted to my Imagination!"

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: 1754

"The scene of the mind, like a moving picture, must be governed with attention, that it may bring into our view the images we want, and as we want them. Otherwise ideas that are foreign to our actual train of thinking will frequently rush into our thoughts, and become objects of them whether we w...

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

Date: 1754

"When they have really such ideas in their minds, they must remember too that figures and comparisons are varnish still. It must not be used to alter the intellectual picture, it must only serve to give a greater lustre, and to make it better seen."

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

Date: 1759

"Ye Mothers! train your Daughter's infant Mind; / To practise, when Adult, what's here injoin'd; / With early Care, Seeds of Compliance sow, / As you first shape the Twig, the Tree will grow; / Good Education elevates our Souls, / Corrects the Passions, Appetites controls; / Refines our Nature, a...

— Marriott, Thomas (d. 1766)

Date: 1760-7

"To conceive this right,--call for pen and ink--here's paper ready to your hand. --Sit down, Sir, paint her to your own mind"

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"By an idea, then, I mean that image or picture which is formed in the mind, of any thing which we have seen, or even heard talk of; for the mind is so adroit and ready at this kind of painting, that a town, for instance, is no sooner mentioned, but the imagination shapes it into form, and presen...

— Telescope, Tom [pseud.]

Date: 1761

"No, thou art all that's elegant and fair, / And perfect upon earth; and Caius happy / Beyond whatever gratitude express'd, / Or fancy drew, when glowing raptures catch / The poet's breast, and set the soul on fire."

— Cumberland, Richard (1732-1811)

Date: 1761

"I admire and revere the purity of your sentiments, the innocence of your life; I trace out in my mind the method of your daily conduct, by comparing it with what I formerly well knew in happier days, and under more endearing circumstances."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)