Date: Friday, June 20, 1712

"My Son, th' Instruction that my Words impart, / Grave on the Living Tablet of thy Heart; / And all the wholesome Precepts that I give, / Observe with strictest Reverence, and live."

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1712

"The ready Phantomes at her Nod advance, / And form the busie Intellectual Dance: / While her fair Scenes to vary, or supply, / She singles out fit Images, that lye / In Memory's Records, which faithful hold / Objects immense in secret Marks inroll'd, / The sleeping Forms at her Command awake, / ...

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

Date: July 23, 1703; 1714

"Time, I daily find, blots out apace the little Stock of my Mind, and has disabled me from furnishing all that I would willingly contribute to the Memory of that Learned Man.."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1719

"Than from this Mind, O! venerable Shade, / Th'Impression be eras'd thy Words have made."

— Breval, John Durant (1680/81-1738)

Date: 1720

"But Adam's Soul being put in his Body, his Brain was a Tabula rasa, as White Paper, had no Impressions in it, but such as either God put in it, or such as came to him by his Senses."

— Burnet, Gilbert (1643-1715)

Date: 1722

"I believe my mistress herself has signed and sealed, in her heart, to Mr. Myrtle--did I not bid you kiss me but once and be gone?"

— Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729)

Date: 1726

"How the weak Mind a naked Blank, receives, / The first Impression Time, or Custom gives."

— Johnson, Charles (1679?-1748)

Date: 1730

"The former of these, our Free-thinkers, out of their singular wisdom, and benevolence to makind, endeavour to erase from the minds of men."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Date: 1732

"Each Line's a Transcript of his Mind!"

— Mitchell, Joseph (c. 1684-1738)

Date: 1742 [see first edition, 1733]

"The Mind, like a Tabula rasa, easyly receives the first Impression; and, like that, when the first Impression is deeply made, it with Difficulty admits of an Erasement of the first Characters, which in some Minds are indelible"

— Cooke, Thomas (1703-1756)