Date: 1737, 1743
"It is not so much the being exempt from Faults, as the having overcome them, that is an Advantage to us; it being with the Follies of the Mind as with the Weeds of a Field, which, if destroyed and consumed upon the place of their Birth, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung the...
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1737, 1743
"We should manage our Thoughts in composing a Poem, as Shepherds do their Flowers in making a Garland; first select the Choicest, and then dispose them in the most proper places, where they give a Lusture to each other: Like the Feathers in Indian Crowns, which are so managed that every one refle...
preview | full record— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Date: 1738
"And as the Mind in Infants, is like a white Sheet of Paper, where nothing is written; or like a tender Twig, which may be bent every Way; it is evident, that either Virtue or Vice may be planted in it."
preview | full record— Guazzo, Stefano (1530-1593)
Date: January 1739
"The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1740
"Some have said that the human Mind contained within it the Seeds of all Sciences; the Mind is indeed a Soil in which any of these Seeds may be sown, but it must be cultivated; and without an Husbandman it will continue a mere Tabula rasa, except what the Instincts write on it, without a p...
preview | full record— Philalethes [pseud.]
Date: 1740
"Your Soul shall grow up as young Plants, and your Daughters be as the polished Corners of the Temple; and to sum up all Blessings in one,--Then shall the LORD be your GOD."
preview | full record— Whitefield, George (1714-1770)
Date: 1741, 1742, 1755
"A Miracle that can be accounted for no other Way, than by what has been said above of the Legislator's principal Concern in the Support of the Doctrine; and of the deep Root it takes in the Mind of Man, when once it is received, by its agreeable Nature."
preview | full record— Warburton, William (1698-1779)
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."
preview | full record— 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...
preview | full record— Watts, Isaac (1674-1748)
Date: 1742
"Socrates, and other ancients, seem to have had particular pleasure in running a parallel between agriculture and the improvement of the mind: But in no respect does the comparison or likeness hold more exactly than in this, that as the ground must be properly prepared for the reception and nouri...
preview | full record— Turnbull, George (1698-1748)