Date: 1762-1763

"Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unencumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak ...

— Adams, Abigail (1744-1818)

Date: 1787

"They [the Indians] will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1787

"This will in some measure stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature."

— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)

Date: 1787

"The young man comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the others the concupiscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within himself to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of c...

— Adams, John (1735-1826)

Date: 1791, 1794

"I will wear a smile on my face, though the thorn rankles in my heart."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1793

"For her own child, all the feelings of a parental bosom vegetated in luxuriance."

— Anonymous [By an American Lady]

Date: 1793

"Mrs. Leason has one child, blessed with good natural abilities, and educated by a less indulgent parent, she might have shone in a domestic character, but when the idea is instilled in the youthful mind, that it is to be indulged in all its wishes, let the disposition be ever so pleasing, the so...

— Anonymous [By an American Lady]

Date: 1793

"If the mind is a barren waste, of what avail are the beauties of the most lovely face, the elegance of the most enchanting shape, the grace of the most accomplished person; the imperceptible hand of time will deprive them of every external charm, and eclipse the lustre of the most penetrating eye."

— Anonymous [By an American Lady]

Date: 1799

Certain beliefs cannot be "outrooted" from the mind

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1800

"You see, though a man, I use your privilege, and prefer knitting yarn to threshing my brain with a book or the barn-floor with a flail"

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)