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."
preview | full record— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)
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."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"Oh thou possessor of heavenly wisdom, would be this separation, this immeasurable distance from my friends, were I not able thus to delineate my heart upon paper, and to send thee daily a map of my mind."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"Here it was that I exulted in my success; no blot, no stain, appeared on any part of the faithful mirror. As when the large, unwritten page presents its snowy spotless bosom to the writer's hand; so appeared the glass to my view."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1781
"May God write it upon all your hearts!"
preview | full record— Wesley, John (1703-1791)
Date: 1784, 1804
"But his spiritual kingdom is not of this world; the throne of grace is in heaven; his laws are from heaven, and written in the minds of all his subjects."
preview | full record— Huntington, William (1745-1813)
Date: 1785
"Sir, Dr Cheyne has laid down a rule to himself on this subject, which should be imprinted on every mind: 'To neglect nothing to secure my eternal peace, more than if I had been certified I should die within the day: nor to mind any thing that my secular obligations and duties demanded of me, les...
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)