Date: 1718 [first published 1684-1694]

"For sottish ease, and a life wholly sedentary and given up to Idleness, spoils and debilitates, not only the Body but the Soul too: And as close Waters shadowed over by bordering Trees, and stagnated in default of Springs, so supply current and motion to them become foul and corrupt; so methinks...

— Plutarch (c. 46-120)

Date: 1721, 1722

"On the contrary, the countries of the Mahometans every day become deserts, from an opinion, which, all holy as it is, yet is not without very hurtful consequences, when it is rooted in the mind."

— Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Date: 1727, 1787

"Oak was his heart, his breast with steel / Thrice mail'd, that first the brittle keel / Committed to the murtherous deep."

— Welsted, Leonard (1688-1747)

Date: 1738

"And as the Mind in Infants, is like a white Sheet of Paper, where nothing is written; or like a tender Twig, which may be bent every Way; it is evident, that either Virtue or Vice may be planted in it."

— Guazzo, Stefano (1530-1593)

Date: 1746, 1749

"But, since we never from the Breast of Fools / Can root their Passions, yet while Reason rules, / Let her hold forth her Scales with equal Hand, / Justly to punish, as the Crimes demand."

— Francis, Philip (1708-1773)

Date: 1753

"The knowledge of good is form'd in our souls, as the seeds are in the ground; there is a time when they lie conceal'd, a time when they spring forth, and a time when they bear fruit"

— Du Bosc, Jacques (d. 1660)

Date: 1761

"He talked of love like a philosopher, who thinks his mind superior to the passions; but, for my part, I am mistaken if he has not already felt a passion, which will prevent any other from taking deep root in his breast."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Love has insinuated itself too far into your mind, for you ever to drive it thence. It has eaten its way, has penetrated into its inmoft recesses, like a corrosive menstruum, whose impressions you will never be able to efface, without deftroying at the same time all that virtuous sensibility you...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Let us wait for the opening of reason; it is that which displays the character, and gives it its true form: it is by that also it is cultivated, and there is no such thing as education before the understanding is ripe for instruction."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"The mind becomes heavy and dull by inaction. The seed takes no root in a soil badly prepared, and it is a strange manner of preparing children to become reasonable, by beginning to make them stupid."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)