Date: May 6, 1736

"Others, with equal truth and justice, have likened the Minds of Children to a rasa Tabula, or white Paper, whereon we may imprint, or write what Characters we please; which will prove so lasting, as not to be effaced without injuring or destroying the Beauty of the whole."

— Denne, John (1693-1767)

Date: May 6, 1736

"These first Characters therefore ought to be deeply and beautifully struck, and the Learning they express should be of great Price. And this, if timely Care be taken, may be done with ease because the Mind is then soft and tender: and because Truth and Right are by the nature of Things, as pleas...

— Denne, John (1693-1767)

Date: 1741, 1742, 1755

"For it was Aristotle's opinion, who compared the soul to a 'rasa tabula', that human sensations and reflections were passions: These therefore are what he finely calls, the 'passive intelligent'; which, he says, shall cease, or is corruptible."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750

"But the images which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of rasure or of change."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1750

"The Soul is a Tabula rasa, and gets all it knows thro' the Body; so there is no Law implanted in the Soul."

— Bate, Julius (1711-1771)

Date: February 4, 1752

"My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers, knew the force of early education, and took care that the blank of my understanding should be filled with impressions of the value of money."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"And so Dr. Edwards remarks of Socinus, that Adam, according to Him, had only the Faculty of Understanding, but none of the Accomplishments of it: His Mind being a pure rasa tabula, capable indeed of any Impressions, but having no Characters of Wisdom engraven upon it, by the Finger of God, when ...

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)

Date: 1756

"This heart is become a mere rasa tabula; you must help it to the [GREEK CHARACTERS], you must lay in it the foundation of natural religion, (i.e. "the dictates of common sense, for natural religion, according to Mr. H. is nothing else,) if you would raise the superstr...

— Patten, Thomas (1714-1790)

Date: 1757

"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: September 1, 1759.

" Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)