Date: 1756-9

"From their cradle she instilled into them the most perfect maxims of piety, and contempt of the world. the ancient Romans dreaded nothing more in the education of youth than their being ill taught the first principles of the sciences; it being more difficult to unlearn the errours then imbibed, ...

— Butler, Alban (1709-1773)

Date: 1756

"This heart is become a mere rasa tabula; you must help it to the [GREEK CHARACTERS], you must lay in it the foundation of natural religion, (i.e. "the dictates of common sense, for natural religion, according to Mr. H. is nothing else,) if you would raise the superstr...

— Patten, Thomas (1714-1790)

Date: 1757

"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

Date: 1759

"That medling Ape Imitation, as soon as we come to years of Indiscretion (so let me speak), snatches the Pen, and blots out nature's mark of Separation, cancels her kind intention, destroys all mental Individuality"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1759

"All these particulars, I say, consider'd, why should it seem altogether impossible, that heaven's latest editions of the human mind may be the most correct, and fair."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: September 1, 1759.

" Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1763

"The mind of man is, at first, a kind of tabula rasa; or like a piece of blank paper, and bears no original inscriptions, when we come into the world; we owe all the characters afterwards drawn upon it, to the impressions made upon our senses; to education, custom, and the like."

— Fielding, John, Sir (1721-1780)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"Memory in a great measure depends upon the body, and is often much injured by a disease, and afterwards recovered with recovering strength, which on the Cartesian hypothesis is accounted for, by supposing that those parts of the brain, on which these characters are written, are by such disorders...

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1763 (repr. 1776); 1794 (repr. 1799)

"Children soon forget, as they soon learn: old people learn with difficulty, and remember best what they learnt when young. That is, say the Cartesians because the brain growing by degrees more dry retains old characters, but does not easily admit new."

— Doddridge, Philip (1702-1751)

Date: 1765

"Do thou O Tablet, either both, or nothing; either let thy words and sense go together, or be thy bosom a rasa tabula."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)