Date: 1838

"Although we may have fondly loved them [the dead], and may hallow the memory of their good qualities, we cannot always summon their image before us, and by the power of conception gaze on their features, and listen to their voice; but I venture to express my conviction, that no one who has been ...

— Gurney, Joseph John (1788-1847)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1851

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1851

"For the more one reads the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a tablet that has been written over and over."

— Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788-1860)

Date: 1871

"[T]he mynd of man first of hyt selfe ys a clene and pure tabul where ys no thyng payntyd or carvyd, but of hyt selfe apt & indyfferent to receyve al maner of pycturys, and image."

— Starkey, Thomas (c. 1495-1538)

Date: April, 1871

"Once acutely felt, I believe it is indelible; at least, it does something to the mind which it is hard for anything else to undo."

— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)

Date: w. before 1641, 1883

"[H]is face was the frontispice of his mind, hee knew not how to dissemble a thought."

— Smyth, John (1567-1640)