Date: 1777, 1778

"The mind of youth is a kind of tabula rasa;--at first unstained with guilt, and unadorned with virtue."

— 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!"

— Rack, Edmund (1735-1787)

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

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

— Wesley, John and Charles

Date: 1781

"Ideas of sense are but the first elements of thought: and the produce raised from these elements by the operation of the mind upon them is as far superiour to the elements themselves in variety, copiousness and use, as books are to the characters of which they are composed."

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1781

"May God write it upon all your hearts!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1782

"The wise philosopher tells us, that the soul of man is rasa tabula, like a white sheet of paper, out of which it must be more than common art to erase the first impressions"

— Grose, John (bap. 1758, d. 1821)

Date: 1782

A poet may "in robes of beauty to array, / And in bright Order's lucid blaze display, / The forms that Fancy, to thy wishes kind, / Stamps on the tablet of thy clearer mind"

— Hayley, William (1745-1820)

Date: 1782

Books may adorn one's "intellects as well as shelves"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1782

A people may receive the "transcript of the eternal mind"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)