Date: 1776

" A father, husband, brother sorrowing weep, / Whose hearts engraven thy fair virtues keep."

— Shaw, Cuthbert (1738-1771)

Date: 1776-1789

"Such a festival must indeed have degenerated, in a wealthy and despotic empire, into a theatrical representation; but it was at least a comedy well worthy of a royal audience, and which might sometimes imprint a salutary lesson on the mind of a young prince."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776-1789

"These convenient maxims of reverence and implicit faith were doubtless imprinted with care on the tender minds of youth"

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1776

"The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who have made such a great progress in the sciences, were not actuated by supernatural causes, or any innate principles in their original formation; the mind is a mere blank, but capable of receiving such impressions as custom, education, or any other relative c...

— Gwynn, John (bap. 1713, d. 1786)

Date: 1777, 1778

"The mind of youth is a kind of tabula rasa;--at first unstained with guilt, and unadorned with virtue."

— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)

Date: 1777, 1778

"May the fair page never be polluted!--may it become inscribed with every excellent virtue--and be thereby rendered comely in the sight of Men, of Angels, of the Deity!"

— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)

Date: 1767, 1778

A "sacred legacy with time shall last" and "On thankful hearts engrav'd, what thou hast done"

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1779, 1794

"Upon the back of each bright heart / These words engraven were [literally], / In mystic characters; fond Love / And joy have fix'd me here."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

Date: 1780

"Not an indifferency to, or equilibrium betwixt right and wrong; for that had been to have a mixed, or no quality, a mere rasa tabula, to be impressed things extrinsical to it, without any understanding and choice of its own: Both which were foreign to the primitive state of man."

— Manners, Nicholas

Date: 1780

"And tell our hearts the thing shall be, / And seal it on our conscience now!"

— Wesley, John and Charles