Date: 1769

"Pox on their philosophy! Instead of demonstrating the immortality of the soul, they have plainly proved the soul is a chimæra, a will o' the wisp, a bubble, a term, a word, a nothing!"

— Smollett, Tobias (1721-1777)

Date: 1770

"Let him not intrude upon the company of men of science; but repose with his brethren Aquinas and Suarez, in the corner of some Gothic cloister, dark as his understanding, and cold as his heart."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: September, 1770

"This double feeling is of various kinds and various degrees; some minds receiving a colour from the objects around them, like the effects of the sun beams playing thro' a prism; and others, like the cameleon, having no colours of their own, take just the colours of what chances to be nearest them."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, / 'And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, / 'Henceforth no earthly hope with heaven shall share / 'This heart, where peace serenely shines at last."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The gloomy race / 'By Indolence and moping Fancy bred, / 'Fear, Discontent, Solicitude give place, / 'And Hope and Courage brighten in their stead, / 'While on the kindling soul her vital beams are shed."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, / 'Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, / 'And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, / 'Whose long progression leads to Deity."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1773

"The way we tread is rugged at best; we tread it, however, lighter by the prospect of that better country to which we trust it will lead; tell us not that it will end in the gulph of eternal dissolution, or break off in some wild, which fancy may fill up as she pleases, but reason is unable to de...

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1774

"While a man is engaged in composition or investigation, he often seems to himself to be fired with his subject, and to teem with ideas; but on revising the work, finds that his judgment is offended, and his time lost. An idea that sparkled in the eye of fancy, is often condemned by judgment as f...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Penetration implies such a force of imagination as leads to the comprehension and explication of a subject: brightness of imagination fits a man for adorning a subject. A penetrating mind emits the rays by which truth is discovered: a bright fancy supplies the colours by which beauty is produced."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)