Date: 1747
"Let the Children of Italy, France, Spain, and the rest of the Popish Countries, furnish him with Blank Paper for Principles, of which free-born Britons are not capable."
preview | full record— Croxall, Samuel (1688/9-1752); Aesop
Date: April 1750, 1791
"Hail, wond'rous Being, who in pow'r supreme / Exists from everlasting, whose great Name / Deep in the human heart, and every atom, / The Air, the Earth or azure Main contains, / In undecypher'd characters is wrote."
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
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."
preview | full record— 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."
preview | full record— Bate, Julius (1711-1771)
Date: 1752
"Yet hold me near Thee; set me as a Seal, / Deep on thy dear dear Heart!"
preview | full record— Browne, Moses (1706-1787)
Date: 1752
"Go, Christian! with th' endearing Pledges seal'd / Fresh on thy Soul, resembling Pattern show/ How Jesus liv'd"
preview | full record— Browne, Moses (1706-1787)
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."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: June 1753
"My hand, the secretary of my mind, / Leaves thee these lines upon the poplar's rind."
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
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 ...
preview | full record— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)
Date: 1755
"Why did I not / Repent, while yet my Crimes were decibel! / Ere they had struck their Colours thro' my Soul, / As black as Night or Hell!"
preview | full record— Brown, John (1715-1766)