Date: 1793

"A skilful writer of anecdotes, gratifies by suffering us to make something that looks like a discovery of our own; he gives a certain activity to the mind, and the reflections appear to arise from ourselves. He throws unperceivably seeds, and we see those flowers start up, which we believe to be...

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: 1793

"Marville says, that the famous orators in the pulpit and at the bar, of his time, used to read the finest passages of the poets, to germinate those seeds of eloquence which nature had scattered in their souls."

— Disraeli, Isaac (1766-1848)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"Her indulgent tenderness, the frankness of her temper, and my innate rising curiosity, soon removed all distance between us: like friends of an equal age, we freely conversed on every topic, familiar or abstruse; and it was her delight and reward to observe the first shoots of my young ideas."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"While I served in the militia, before and after the publication of my essay, this idea ripened in my mind; nor can I paint in more lively colours the feelings of the moment, than by transcribing some passages, under their respective dates, from a journal which I kept at that time."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1797

"Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of the soil."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1797

"We learn from the Scriptures that it is one main part of the operations of the Holy Spirit, to implant those heavenly principles in the human mind, and to cherish their growth."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1797

"Examine carefully, whether the unchristian tempers, which you would eradicate, are not maintained in vigour by selfishness and pride; and strive to subdue them effectually, by extirpating the roots from which they derive their nutriment."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1798

"When a man enters to it, he is not only to be taught true wisdom, but he is withal, yea, first of all, to be untaught the errors and wickedness that are deep-rooted in his mind, which he hath not only learned by the corrupt conversation of the world with him."

— Leighton, Robert (1611-1684)

Date: 1817

"My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above the ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1819

"But there are persons of that low and inordinate appetite for servility, that they cannot be satisfied with any thing short of that sort of tyranny that has lasted for ever, and is likely to last for ever; that is strengthened and made desperate by the superstitions and prejudices of ages; that ...

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)