Date: February, 1821

"I said to myself, 'This is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper.'"

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

Date: 1822

"Thou didst say thou knewest / A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle / Of strange and secret and forgotten things."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1823

"His mind was in its original state of white paper."

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1823

"His pen was not less erring than his heart"

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1824

"And in my wisdom are the orbs of Heaven / Written as in a record"

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1825

The "white page of innocence and youth" may be tinted.

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1832

"The mind of a new-born infant .... so far from being, as Locke affirms, a sheet of blank paper, is ... a perfect encyclopedia, comprehending not only the newest discoveries, but all those still more valuable and wonderful inventions that will hereafter be made."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: January, 1833

"What they know has come by observation of themselves; they have found within them one highly delicate and sensitive specimen of human nature, on which the laws of emotion are written in large characters, such as can be read off without much study."

— Mill, John Stuart (1806–1873)

Date: June 19, 1834

"I know my own sentiments, because I can read my own mind, but the minds of the rest of man and woman-kind are to me as sealed volumes, hieroglyphical scrolls, which I can not easily unseal or decipher."

— Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855)

Date: June 19, 1834

"How many after having, as they thought, discovered the word friend in the mental volume, have afterwards found that they have read false friend!"

— Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855)