Date: 1748, 1754

"The sensible Beauty, or Good, is refined from its Dross by partaking of the Moral, and the Moral receives a Stamp, a visible Character and Currency from the Sensible."

— Fordyce, David (bap. 1711, d. 1751)

Date: 1751, 1777

"If refined sense and exalted sense be not so useful as common sense, their rarity, their novelty, and the nobleness of their objects make some compensation, and render them the admiration of mankind: As gold, though less serviceable than iron, acquires, from its scarcity, a value, which is much ...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"The one [reason] discovers objects, as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution: The other [taste] has a productive faculty, and gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises, in a manner, a new creation."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1767

"Imitation indeed, of every kind, except that of nature, has a tendency to cramp the inventive powers of the mind, which, if indulged in their excursions, might discover new mines of intellectual ore, that lie hid only from those who are incapable or unwilling to dive into the recesses in which i...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1767

"The mines of Fancy not having been opened before his time, are left to be digged by him; and the treasures they contain become his own, by a right derived from the first discovery. The whole system of nature, and the whole region of fiction, yet unexplored by others, is subjected to his survey, ...

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1774

"Fancy throws out both the worthless earth and the rich ore; judgment, like a skilful refiner, distinguishes the one from the other, and purifies the gold contained in the latter, from the dross with which it is intermingled."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: w. 1755, 1777

"She [Nature] employs it [spiritual substance] as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: w. 1755, 1777

"And does any thing steel the breast of judges and juries against the sentiments of humanity but reflections on necessity and public interest?"

— Hume, David (1711-1776)