Date: 1782

"'Tis granted, and no plainer truth appears, / Our most important are our earliest years. / The mind impressible and soft, with ease / Imbibes and copies what she hears and sees, / And through life's labyrinth holds fast the clue /That education gives her, false or true."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

The mind may be "unfurnish'd" and listless

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

Superficial education slights "the precious kernel of the stone" and polishes "its rough coat alone"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"Faults in the life breed errors in the brain"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"The mind and conduct mutually imprint / And stamp their image in each other's mint."

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

A "glance of the mind" is fleet

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

"Till then, old red-nos'd Wilson's art / Will hold its empire o'er my heart."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1782

"What Addison has said of the Ways of Heaven, may with much more propriety & accuracy be applied to the the 'Mind of Man which indeed, is Dark & Intricate, Filled with wild Mazes, & perplexed with Error.''"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"The wise philosopher tells us, that the soul of man is rasa tabula, like a white sheet of paper, out of which it must be more than common art to erase the first impressions"

— Grose, John (bap. 1758, d. 1821)

Date: 1787

"Yet when he bawl'd for sense, he bawl'd, I wot, / For furniture the head had never got."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)