Date: 1765
"I am apt to think that as Plants are choak'd with too much Moisture, and Lamps with too much Oil; so it happens to the Mind of Man, when it is embarass'd with too much Study and Matter; for being confounded with a great Variety of Things, it loses the Power of extricating itself, and so is rende...
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1766
"It requires but little, to awaken a passion, which is not, entirely, rooted out from the heart."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)
Date: 1767
"Poetic Genius in particular cannot flourish either in uninterrupted SUNSHINE, or in continual SHADE. It languishes under the blazing ardor of a summer noon, as its buds are blasted by the damp fogs and chilling breath of a winter sky."
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: 1771
"The growth of knowledge" resembles "the growth of fruit," as it is "the internal vigour, and virtue of the tree that must ripen the juices to their just maturity"
preview | full record— Harris, James (1709-1780)
Date: 1771
"That is, let not great examples, or authorities, browbeat they reason into too great a diffidence fo thyself: thyself so reverence, as to prefer the native growth of thy own mind to the richest import from abroad; such borrowed riches make us poor."
preview | full record— Author Unknown
Date: 1773
"Human nature is ever liable to corruption, and has in it the seeds of every vice, as well as of every virtue; and the first will be continually shooting forth and growing up, if not carefully watched and rooted out as fast as they appear."
preview | full record— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)
Date: 1774
"Were it necessary to produce instances of a fruitful imagination unproductive of true genius, we might find enough among those pretenders to poetry, who can, through many lines, run from one shining image to another, and finish many harmonious periods, without any sentiment or design; or among t...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1774
"When a vegetable draws in moisture from the earth, nature, by the same action by which it draws it in, and at the same time, converts it to the nourishment of the plant: it at once circulates through its vessels, and is assimilated to its several parts. In like manner, genius arranges its ideas ...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1774
"As a rich soil produces not only the largest quantity of grain, but also the greatest profusion of such weeds as tend to choak it; so a fertile imagination, along with just and useful ideas, produces many trifling, false, and improper thoughts, which, if they be not immediately examined by reaso...
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: December 10, 1774; 1775
"The mind is but a barren soil; is a soil soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilised and enriched with foreign matter."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)