Date: Dated August 6, 1707; 1711

"The mind of man is at first (if you will pardon the expression) like a tabula rasa, or like wax, which, while it is soft, is capable of any impression, till time has hardened it."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: Friday, August 1711

"This was a childish Amusement when I was carried away with outward Appearance, but you make a deeper Impression, and affect the secret Springs of the Mind; you charm the Fancy, sooth the Passions, and insensibly lead the Reader to that Sweetness of Temper that you so well describe; you rouse Gen...

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: Thursday, August 9, 1711

"Where Sovereigns have it [love of glory] by Impressions received from Education only, it creates an Ambitious rather than a Noble Mind; where it is the natural Bent of the Prince's Inclination, it prompts him to the Pursuit of Things truly Glorious."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1713, 1734

"And that outward objects by the different impressions they make on the organs of sense, communicate certain vibrative motions to the nerves; and these being filled with spirits, propagate them to the brain or seat of the soul, which according to the various impressions or traces thereby made in ...

— Berkeley, George (1685-1753)

Date: Jan 7 1712/13

"The Heart must be Tabula Rasa, white Paper to his Pen, soft Wax to his Seal: Let him write upon me what he pleaseth, and make what Impressions he pleaseth upon me."

— Henry, Matthew (1662-1714)

Date: 1715

"THEN as to Correction, the Heart being hardned, as before, by Opinion and Practice, and especially in a Belief that he ought not to be corrected, the Rod of Correction has a different Effect; for as the Blow of a Stripe makes an Impression on the Heart of a Child, as stamping a Seal does upon th...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: September 10, 1726

"To explain this, we must consider that the first Image which an outward Object imprints on our Brain is very slight; it resembles a thin Vapour which dwindles into nothing, without leaving the least track after it. But if the same Object successively offers itself several times, the Image it occ...

— Arbuckle, James (d. 1742)

Date: 1727

"But in the midst of these Tumults of his Soul, he had a strong Impression upon his Mind, that he could never die in Peace, nor ever go to Heaven, if he did not go over to England, and either get the Parliament's Pardon (for it was in those Days when there was no King in Israel) or that if he cou...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1731

"For those Ideas of Heat, Light, and Colours, and other Sensible things, being not Qualities really existing in the Bodies without us, as the Atomical Philosophy instructs us, and therefore not passively stamped or imprinted upon the Soul from without in the same manner that a Signature is upon a...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)

Date: 1731

"That there are some Ideas of the Mind which were not stamped or imprinted upon it from the Sensible Objects without, and therefore must needs arise from the Innate Vigour and Activity of the Mind it self, is evident, in that there are, First, Ideas of such things as neither are Affections of Bod...

— Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688)