Date: 1755
"My squire, however, will intimate how I am; while I content myself with assuring you, that I will, to all eternity, preserve engraven upon the tablets of my memory, the benevolence you this day vouchsafed unto me, that I may be grateful for the favour, as long as life shall remain."
preview | full record— Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547-1616); Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771)
Date: 1757-9
"[N]o Sentence so severe / As this, my Mind, much less my Paper, stains"
preview | full record— Duncombe, John (1729-1786) [Editor]
Date: 1761, 1790
If the mind is corporeal it must be composed of infinite parts: "Which then can claim dominion o'er the rest, / Or stamp the ruling passion in the breast"
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)
Date: 1761, 1790
"This then's the first great law by Nature giv'n, / Stamp'd on our souls, and ratify'd by Heav'n"
preview | full record— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787); Browne, Isaac Hawkins (1706-1760)
Date: 1761
The mind of the hearer might very well be a tabula rasa, free from every prejudice, and like soft wax, susceptible of every impression; and with all this, not yield to truth itself, proposed in the manner it is every day proposed, under the appearance of falsehood."
preview | full record— Batteaux, Charles (1713-1780)
Date: 1761
"The image of Eloisa, never to be erased from my mind, shall be my shield, and render my soul invulnerable."
preview | full record— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)
Date: 1762
"Had the proud exile read my heart, / He then must have appeas'd the woes I suffer'd, / He then had pardon'd, and thou might'st have sooth'd me."
preview | full record— Cradock, Joseph (1742-1826)
Date: 1765
"That fruit thy covenant may yield, / Which is upon my forehead seal'd, / And on my heart ingraft."
preview | full record— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English
"But I had found it: I did find and know an exalted mind, which raised me beyond myself, and made me all that I am capable of being. All the powers of my soul were extended, and the deep sentiment which nature engraved on my heart, was unfolded."
preview | full record— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)
Date: 1788-89
"According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere rasa tabula, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank."
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)