Date: 1771

"If they had made no impression upon his heart"

— Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790)

Date: 1791, 1794

"But Charlotte had made too great an impression on his mind to be easily eradicated."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"'I am bad company, Miss Franklin,' said he, at last recollecting himself; 'but I have met with something to-day that has greatly distressed me, and I cannot shake off the disagreeable impression it has made on my mind.'"

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1793

"Yet such is the construction of the human mind, that fear must be strongly imprest not to wear off by time."

— Anonymous [By an American Lady]

Date: 1845

"I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1854

"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 2014

"She'd heard that once and was trying to stamp the phrase on her mind."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)

Date: 2015

"The memory branded itself on his brain: the gales of laughter, everyone offering him their cookies, the slave woman with her eyes on the floor."

— Zink, Nell (b. 1964)

Date: July 26, 2016

"But it is true that she told none of these types of personal anecdotes that help people watching at home form impressions from mental clay."

— Haberman, Maggie (b. 1973)

Date: July 31, 2017

"Character is like concrete: You can make an impression when it's freshly poured, in its youth, one could say, but when it sets, it's impervious to alteration."

— Blow, Charles (b. 1970)