Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"For the human mind has within it a sort of spark of the divine, in which the first seeds of useful ways of thinking are sown, seeds which, however neglected and stifled by studies which impede them, often bear fruit of their own accord."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: w. 1628, published in 1684, 1701

"But I am convinced that certain primary seeds of truth naturally implanted in human minds thrived vigorously in that unsophisticated and innocent age - seeds which have been stifled in us through our constantly reading and hearing all sorts of errors"

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

Date: 1741

"Yet all Persons are under some Obligation to improve their own Understanding, otherwise it will be a barren Desart, or a Forest overgrown grown with Weeds and Brambles."

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1741

"I Might give another plain Simile to confirm the Truth of this [mnemonic method]. What Horse or Carriage can take up and bear away all the various, rude and unweildy Loppings of a branchy Tree at once? But if they are divided yet further so as to be laid close, and bound up in a more uniform Man...

— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)

Date: 1751, 1791

"Now take a Simile at Hand, / Compare the mental Soil to Land."

— Cotton, Nathaniel, the elder (1705-1788)

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: 1830

"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, t...

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1850

"My seventeenth year was come; / And, whether from this habit rooted now / So deeply in my mind, or from excess / In the great social principle of life / Coercing all things into sympathy, / To unorganic natures were transferred / My own enjoyments; or the power of truth / Coming in revelation, d...

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1850

"Caverns there were within my mind which sun / Could never penetrate, yet did there not / Want store of leafy arbours where the light / Might enter in at will."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)

Date: 1850

"These mighty workmen of our later age, / Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged / The froward chaos of futurity, / Tamed to their bidding; they who have the skill / To manage books, and things, and make them act / On infant minds as surely as the sun / Deals with a flower."

— Wordsworth, William (1770-1850)