Date: 1741

"Maronides had got the first hundred Lines of Virgil's 'Æneis' printed upon his Memory so perfectly, that he knew not only the Order and Number of every Verse from one to a hundred in Perfection, but the Order and Number of every Word in each Verse also."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"Let every thing we desire to remember be fairly and distinctly written and divided into Periods, with large Characters in the Beginning; for by this Means we shall the more readily imprint the Matter and Words on our Minds, and recollect them with a Glance, the more remarkable the Writi...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1744

"A mere existence or being is an indifferent thing, ('tis a Rasa Tabula) that may be coloured over with sin or holiness: and accordingly it receives its value from these; as a picture is esteemed not from the materials upon which it is drawn, but from the draught itself."

— South, Robert (1634-1716)

Date: 1745

"They are plainly and explicitly published; easily understood; and in fair and legible characters writ in every man's heart; and the wisdom, reason, and necessity of them are readily discerned."

— Mason, John (1706-1763)

Date: Tuesday, August 7, 1750

"But the images which memory presents are of a stubborn and untractable nature, the objects of remembrance have already existed, and left their signature behind them impressed upon the mind, so as to defy all attempts of rasure or of change."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1750

"The Soul is a Tabula rasa, and gets all it knows thro' the Body; so there is no Law implanted in the Soul."

— Bate, Julius (1711-1771)

Date: January 3, 1750-51, 1807

"Live then upon the paper, and upon my memory, every stroke of his pen! For there is no gall in his ink, but only precious balm, and honied drops of salutary counsel."

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

Date: February 4, 1752

"My parents, though otherwise not great philosophers, knew the force of early education, and took care that the blank of my understanding should be filled with impressions of the value of money."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1754

"And so Dr. Edwards remarks of Socinus, that Adam, according to Him, had only the Faculty of Understanding, but none of the Accomplishments of it: His Mind being a pure rasa tabula, capable indeed of any Impressions, but having no Characters of Wisdom engraven upon it, by the Finger of God, when ...

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)

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)