Date: 1777

"The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"It is not astonishing that the frail body, when the spirit is carried away by the magnificence of its own ideas ... that the frail body, which is the natural victim of pain, disease, and death, should not always be able to follow the mind in its aspiring flights, but should be as imperfect as if...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: December 10, 1778; 1779

"Where all is novelty, the attention, the exercise of the mind is too violent."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1779-1780, 1781

"He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction and subjects of fancy, and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular ...

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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)

Date: 1780

"The best way therefore is, whilst the mind of the historian is on horseback, for his style to walk on foot, and take hold of the rein, that it may not be left behind."

— Francklin, Thomas (1721–1784); Lucian (b.c. 125, d. after 180)

Date: 1782

"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"Were I poetically turned--what a glorious field for fancy flights--such as the blue-eyed Goddess with her flying carr--her doves and sparrows, &c. &c.--Alas! my imagination is as barren as the desert sands of Arabia."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1783

"The reason seems to be, that, in the former case, the mind is supposed to be hurried so fast through a quick succession of objects, that it has not leisure to point out their connexion; it drops the Copulatives in its hurry; and crowds the whole series together, as if it were but one object."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)

Date: 1783

"It changes the key in a moment; relaxes and brings down the mind; and shews us a writer perfectly at his ease, while he is personating some other, who is supposed to be under the torment of agitation."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)