Date: 1708, 1714

"But the knowledg of our Passions in their very Seeds, the measuring well the Growth and Progress of Enthusiasm, and the judging rightly of its natural Force, and what command it has over our very Senses, may teach us to oppose more successfully those Delusions which come arm'd with the specious ...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1740

"Your Soul shall grow up as young Plants, and your Daughters be as the polished Corners of the Temple; and to sum up all Blessings in one,--Then shall the LORD be your GOD."

— Whitefield, George (1714-1770)

Date: November 10, 1750

"Is it that a long commerce with the world does indeed corrupt the heart; and extinguish by degrees those sparks of light, those inclinations to good, which were implanted in our minds?"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: November 10, 1750

"Or is it rather to be attributed to the seeds of original evil, which grow with our years, and overspread the whole soul?"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1754

"The gardens and lawn seem from the windows of this spacious house to be as boundless as the mind of the owner, and as free and open as his countenance"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"The human soul is so far from being furnished with forms and ideas to perceive all things by, or from being impregnated, I would rather say than printed over, with the seeds of universal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of sensible qualities from without."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

"They are, if I may say so, of the mind's own growth, the elements of knowledge, more immediate, less relative, and less dependent than sensitive knowledge, as any man will be apt to think, who compares his ideas of remembering, recollecting, bare thought, and intenseness of thought, with those o...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1754

But when we enter into a serious and impartial detail concerning this knowledge, and analyse carefully what the great pretenders to it have given and give us daily for knowledge, we shall be obliged to confess, that the human intellect is rather a rank than a fertile soil, barren without due cult...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1773

"Human nature is ever liable to corruption, and has in it the seeds of every vice, as well as of every virtue; and the first will be continually shooting forth and growing up, if not carefully watched and rooted out as fast as they appear."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: April 5, 1781, 1788

"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)