Date: 1774

"Thus imagination is no unskilful architect; it collects and chuses the materials; and though they may at first lie in a rude and undigested chaos, it in a great measure, by its own force, by means of its associating power, after repeated attempts and transpositions, designs a regular and well-pr...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Reason, therefore, at once gives judgment upon the cause; and the vagrant intruder, imagination, is imprisoned, or banished from the mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1777

"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1767, 1778

"Here science, like the sun, see radiant rise, / With intellectual beam, through mental skies, / To gild, to gladden all th' improving space, / With taste, with candor, learning, sense, and grace; / To light up all the mind's remotest cells, / Where fancy fledges, and where genius dwells."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1782

"Here tranquility once more made its abode the heart of Cecilia; that heart so long torn with anguish, suspense and horrour!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1783

"At this window (as the wise man calls it) the soul is often seen in her genuine character, even when the porter below (I mean the tongue) is endeavouring to persuade us, that she is not within, that she is otherwise employed, or that she is quite a different person"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"Does the human soul go up to the pia mater, as a housewife does to her garret, only at certain times? Or, if she makes it her place of abode, are there any corners of it which she is unacquainted with, or neglects to look into?'

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1785

"Unwelcome is the first bright dawn of light / To the dark soul; impatient, she rejects, / And fain would push the heavenly stranger back; / She loathes the cranny which admits the day; / Confused, afraid of the intruding guest; / Disturbed, unwilling to receive the beam, / Which to herself her n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"He conjectured, that the soul is seated in a small gland in the brain, called the pineal gland: That there, as in her chamber of presence, she receives intelligence of every thing that affects the senses, by means of a subtile fluid contained in the nerves, called the animal spirits; and that sh...

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)

Date: 1787

"Again, when some desires retire, there are others akin to them, which grow up, and through inattention to the father's instructions, become both many and powerful, draw towards intimacies among themselves, and generate a multitude, seize the citadel or the soul of the youth, finding it evacuated...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)