Date: 1774

"As a sprightly courser continually mends his pace, so genius, in proportion as it proceeds in its subject, acquires new force and spirit, which urges it on so vehemently, that it cannot be restrained from prosecuting it."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"The vigour of imagination carries it forward to invention; but understanding must always conduct it and regulate its motions. A horse of high mettle ranging at liberty, will run with great swiftness and spirit, but in an irregular track and without any fixt direction: a skilful rider makes him m...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"That turn of imagination which fits a person for productions in the arts, may no doubt be most properly said to soar, to fly, and to have wings. To dig with labour and patience, is a metaphor which may with equal propriety be applied to the investigation of philosophical truth; it is strongly ex...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Acquire an easiness and versatility of manners, as well as of mind; and, like the chameleon, take the hue of the company you are with."

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1774

"This weakness did not proceed from a bad heart, but was merely the effect of vanity, or an unbridled imagination."

— Gregory, John (1724-1773)

Date: 1775

"This is the true nature of the human mind; the greater evil always swallowing up the lesser, as the rod of Moses did the other serpents."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"As it is the character of Genius to penetrate with a lynx's beam into unfathomable abysses and uncreated worlds, and to see what is not, so it is the property of good sense to distinguish perfectly, and judge accurately what really is."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1778

"Our sense of right and wrong, proves that we are immortal--for we cannot suppose that the Almighty would have wantonly tortured us with stings of conscience, any more than he has, the beasts of the field, if we, like them, were to perish"

— Caulfield (fl. 1778)

Date: March, 1778

"An antient philosopher indeed, full of real or pretended honesty, declared it to be his wish that there were a window in his breast that every body might see the integrity and purity of his thoughts. It would be truly be very pretty and amusing if our bodies were transparent, so that we could se...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1779, 1781

"When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his violence and rapidity of verse, as a river swoln with rain rushes from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in quest of poetical decorations, as the bee wanders to collect honey; he, in either case, produces a simile; the mind is impr...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)