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."

— Home, John (1722-1808)

Date: 1770

"Why should not our judgments concerning truth be acknowledged to result from a bias impressed upon the mind by its Creator, as well as our desire of self-preservation, our love of society, our resentment of injury, our joy in the possession of good?"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1774

"Because the impression is made quickly, it does not follow that it is strong: a susceptible memory, like a soft body, receives some impression at once, and because this impression is perceivable at once, we are at no pains to deepen it, we allow it to continue slight: when the memory is, as it ...

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774

"Sometimes these perfections are united: the memory is of such a happy temperature as may be compared to wax, which receives the seal easily and strongly when it is melted, and immediately hardens and suffers it not to be effaced."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1783

Some philosophers "think, that the brains of old men, grown callous by length of time, are, like hard wax, equally tenacious of old impressions, and unsusceptible of new."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The human brain is a bodily substance; and sensible and permanent impressions made upon it must so far resemble those made on sand by the foot, or on wax by the seal, as to have certain shape, length, breadth, and deepness"

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1785

"Aristotle taught, that all the objects of our thought enter at first by the senses; and, since the sense cannot receive external material objects themselves, it receives their species; that is, their images or forms, without the matter; as wax receives the form of the seal without any of the mat...

— Reid, Thomas (1710-1796)