Date: 1787

"They [the Indians] will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1787

"This will in some measure stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1787

"The young man comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the others the concupiscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within himself to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of c...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1799

Certain beliefs cannot be "outrooted" from the mind

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"You see, though a man, I use your privilege, and prefer knitting yarn to threshing my brain with a book or the barn-floor with a flail"

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"Mischievous passions" may be too "deeply rooted" in the heart to tear out

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: August 31, 1837

"A strange process too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: August 31, 1837

"The new deed is yet a part of life, — remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In some contemplative hour, it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: March 1843

"My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset."

— Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864)

Date: 1912

"Could we deftly lift the curtain / Which the cunning serpent draws, / Like the veil of night about us, / We would find that paradise, / Like a flower in winter, lies / 'Neath the stubbles of our souls."

— Beadle, Samuel Alfred (1857-1932)