Date: 1754

But when we enter into a serious and impartial detail concerning this knowledge, and analyse carefully what the great pretenders to it have given and give us daily for knowledge, we shall be obliged to confess, that the human intellect is rather a rank than a fertile soil, barren without due cult...

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

Date: 1761

"He talked of love like a philosopher, who thinks his mind superior to the passions; but, for my part, I am mistaken if he has not already felt a passion, which will prevent any other from taking deep root in his breast."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Love has insinuated itself too far into your mind, for you ever to drive it thence. It has eaten its way, has penetrated into its inmoft recesses, like a corrosive menstruum, whose impressions you will never be able to efface, without deftroying at the same time all that virtuous sensibility you...

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"Let us wait for the opening of reason; it is that which displays the character, and gives it its true form: it is by that also it is cultivated, and there is no such thing as education before the understanding is ripe for instruction."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1761

"The mind becomes heavy and dull by inaction. The seed takes no root in a soil badly prepared, and it is a strange manner of preparing children to become reasonable, by beginning to make them stupid."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1762-1763

"Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unencumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak ...

— Adams, Abigail (1744-1818)

Date: 1773

"Human nature is ever liable to corruption, and has in it the seeds of every vice, as well as of every virtue; and the first will be continually shooting forth and growing up, if not carefully watched and rooted out as fast as they appear."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1782

"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"Your infants growing--with the roseate bloom of health--minds cultured by their father--expanding daily in every improvement--blest little souls!--and happy--happy parents!"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: April 5, 1781, 1788

"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)