Date: 1770

"Why should not our judgments concerning truth be acknowledged to result from a bias impressed upon the mind by its Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of society, our resentment of injury, our joy in the possession of good?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"The captious turn of an habitual wrangler deadens the understanding, sours the temper, and hardens the heart: by rendering the mind suspicious, and attentive to trifles, it weakens the sagacity of instinct, and extinguishes the fire of imagination; it transforms conversation into, a state of war...

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1770

"A metaphysician, exploring the recesses of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microscopic eyes would have, for, finding the road."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"Like a mirrour, it [memory] reflects faithful images of the objects formerly perceived by us, but can exhibit no form with which it is not in this manner supplied. It is in its nature a mere copier; it preserves scrupulously the very position and arrangement of the original sensations, and gives...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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)

Date: 1774

"It is imagination that produces genius; the other intellectual faculties lend their assistance to rear the offspring of imagination to maturity."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"No sooner almost is a design formed, or the hint of a subject started, than all the ideas which are requisite for compleating it, rush into his view as if they were conjured up by the force of magic."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"These latter have only one tie, but the former have a double relation, and will therefore rush into the thoughts with double violence."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"No sooner does the imagination, in a moment of wandering, suggest any idea not conducive to the design, than the conception of this design breaks in of its own accord, and, like an antagonist muscle, counteracting the other association, draws us off to the view of a more proper idea."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

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)