Date: 1762

"Is the beauty of truth, or moral actions, or the deformity of falsehood, or vice, capable of being represented on paper, or on any other plain, except the rasa tabula of the mind?"

— Griffith, Richard (d. 1788)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Oh thou possessor of heavenly wisdom, would be this separation, this immeasurable distance from my friends, were I not able thus to delineate my heart upon paper, and to send thee daily a map of my mind."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Here it was that I exulted in my success; no blot, no stain, appeared on any part of the faithful mirror. As when the large, unwritten page presents its snowy spotless bosom to the writer's hand; so appeared the glass to my view."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1771

"The infant mind at coming to the world, is a meer rasa tabula, destitute of all ideas and materials of reflection."

— Usher, James (1720-1771)

Date: 1771

"It is a charte blanche, ready for receiving the inscriptions of sense; yet it behoves us carefully to observe, that it differs from a rasa tabula or a sheet of clean paper, in the following respect, that you may write on clean paper; that sugar is bitter, wormwood sweet, fire and f...

— Usher, James (1720-1771)

Date: 1794

"The mind is not a rasa tabula, though, at the same time, it must be allowed, we gain no actual knowledge of the latent ideas which it possesses, but as they are awakened by reflection and experience."

— Sullivan, Richard Joseph, Sir (1752-1806)

Date: 1794

"The rasa tabula will not allow us to have mental ideas."

— Sullivan, Richard Joseph, Sir (1752-1806)

Date: 1795

"A soft sponginess of character that will easily acquire any hue, or any stain; a tabula rasa of intellect; a spirit invulnerable to insult; that (for example) after vain endeavors to disunite and discourage the Catholics of Ireland, could condescend to [end page 2] truck and chaffer, for the off...

— Drennan, William (1754-1820)