Date: 1797

"Vice with them is rather an accidental and temporary, than a constitutional and habitual distemper; a noxious plant, which, though found to live and even to thrive in the human mind, is not the natural growth and production of the soil."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1797

"We learn from the Scriptures that it is one main part of the operations of the Holy Spirit, to implant those heavenly principles in the human mind, and to cherish their growth."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1797

"Examine carefully, whether the unchristian tempers, which you would eradicate, are not maintained in vigour by selfishness and pride; and strive to subdue them effectually, by extirpating the roots from which they derive their nutriment."

— Wilberforce, William (1759-1833)

Date: 1798

"When a man enters to it, he is not only to be taught true wisdom, but he is withal, yea, first of all, to be untaught the errors and wickedness that are deep-rooted in his mind, which he hath not only learned by the corrupt conversation of the world with him."

— Leighton, Robert (1611-1684)

Date: 1798

"On the contrary, if, to entice him to enter the paths of knowledge, we strew them with flowers, how will he feel when he must force his way through thorns and briars?"

— Edgeworth, Maria

Date: 1799

"And, indeed, there is so much truth in the remark, that till women shall be more reasonably educated, and till the native growth of their mind shall cease to be stinted and cramped, we have no juster ground for pronouncing that their understanding has already reached its highest attainable point...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1814

"The mind of a child is like the acorn; its powers are folded up, they do not yet appear, but they are all there."

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

Date: 1814

"Instruction is the food of the mind; it is like the dew and the rain and the rich soil."

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

Date: 1817

"My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots as far as they lift themselves above the ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness."

— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)

Date: 1819

"But there are persons of that low and inordinate appetite for servility, that they cannot be satisfied with any thing short of that sort of tyranny that has lasted for ever, and is likely to last for ever; that is strengthened and made desperate by the superstitions and prejudices of ages; that ...

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)