Date: 1778, 1779

"'Oh, Sir,' exclaimed I, 'that you could but read my heart!--that you could but see the filial tenderness and concern with which it overflows! you would not then talk thus,--you would not then banish me your presence, and exclude me from your affection!'"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778

"The mind of man has been by some authors called a tabula rasa, and compared to a sheet of clean paper."

— 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."

— Author Unknown

Date: 1779

"Come, come, Albina; / Though to a Lover you might wear this guise, / Of coy reserve, yet, to a Father's eye, / Your mind should now appear as legible / As in the days of prattling infancy."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1779

"Why stand'st thou thus, with such exploring eyes, / As if thou'dst read the workings of my brain?"

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1779, 1794

"Upon the back of each bright heart / These words engraven were [literally], / In mystic characters; fond Love / And joy have fix'd me here."

— Whalley, Thomas Sedgwick (1746-1828)

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."

— Manners, Nicholas

Date: 1780

"In prayer she was employ'd; which instant taught me / That piety must be the bait to snare her, / --So won her confidence, and read her heart."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1777, 1780

"[T]he name of Sir Philip Harclay shall be engraven upon my heart, next to my Lord and his family, for ever"

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1780

"And tell our hearts the thing shall be, / And seal it on our conscience now!"

— Wesley, John and Charles