Date: 1775
"To the mere novice in philosophical investigations, it will appear impossible to reduce all the variety of thinking to so simple and uniform a process; but to the same person it would also appear impossible a priori, that all the varieties of language, as spoken by all the nations in the world, ...
preview | full record— Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804)
Date: 1776-1789
"Such a festival must indeed have degenerated, in a wealthy and despotic empire, into a theatrical representation; but it was at least a comedy well worthy of a royal audience, and which might sometimes imprint a salutary lesson on the mind of a young prince."
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1776-1789
"These convenient maxims of reverence and implicit faith were doubtless imprinted with care on the tender minds of youth"
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
Date: 1776
"The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, who have made such a great progress in the sciences, were not actuated by supernatural causes, or any innate principles in their original formation; the mind is a mere blank, but capable of receiving such impressions as custom, education, or any other relative c...
preview | full record— Gwynn, John (bap. 1713, d. 1786)
Date: 1777, 1778
"The mind of youth is a kind of tabula rasa;--at first unstained with guilt, and unadorned with virtue."
preview | full record— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)
Date: 1777, 1778
"May the fair page never be polluted!--may it become inscribed with every excellent virtue--and be thereby rendered comely in the sight of Men, of Angels, of the Deity!"
preview | full record— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)
Date: 1778
"The mind of man has been by some authors called a tabula rasa, and compared to a sheet of clean paper."
preview | full record— Author Unknown
Date: 1778
"Hence our frame, from its very origin, seems marked by the hand of nature with indubitable signatures of pre-eminence and distinction."
preview | full record— Author Unknown
Date: 1780
"Not an indifferency to, or equilibrium betwixt right and wrong; for that had been to have a mixed, or no quality, a mere rasa tabula, to be impressed things extrinsical to it, without any understanding and choice of its own: Both which were foreign to the primitive state of man."
preview | full record— Manners, Nicholas
Date: ca. 1780
"Let Truth then, my dear, still dwell on your tongue, / From her maxims O never depart; / But give yourself up to her guidance while young, / Her precepts engrave on your heart."
preview | full record— Kilner, Dorothy (1755-1836)