Date: w. 350 B.C.
"This explains why, in those who are strongly moved owing to passion, or time of life, no memory is formed; just as no impression would be formed if the movement of the seal were to impinge on running water; while there are others in whom, owing to the receiving surface being frayed, as happens t...
preview | full record— Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Date: w. 1740, 1748
"But when your early Care shall have design'd / To plan the Soul and mould the waxen Mind; / When you shall pour upon his tender Breast / Ideas that must stand an Age's Test, / Oh! there imprint with strongest deepest dye / The lovely form of Goddess LIBERTY!"
preview | full record— Walpole, Horatio [Horace], fourth earl of Orford (1717-1797)
Date: 1748, 1749
"Hurried with incessant rapidity by the vortex of blood and animal spirits, one undulation makes an impression, which is immediately effaced by another; the soul pursues it, but often in vain: she must wait to bewail the loss of what she did not quickly lay hold of; and thus it is that the imagin...
preview | full record— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)
Date: Performed Dec 1756, published 1757
"Time, that wears out the trace of deepest anguish, / As the sea smooths the prints made in the sand, / Has past o'er thee in vain."
preview | full record— Home, John (1722-1808)
Date: 1765
"Reason in the bosom pours, / Its growth improves, its fruit matures, / Each counsel of the human brain / Weighs in his scale, and stamps it vain?"
preview | full record— Merrick, James (1720-1769)