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

"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

"But what will then fill up the blank of this my heart?"

— Raspe, Rudolph Eric (1737-1794); Lessing, G. E. (1729-1781)

Date: 1781

"May God write it upon all your hearts!"

— Wesley, John (1703-1791)

Date: 1782

"A letter is the soul's portrait. It is not a cold image, with its stagnation, so remote from love; it lends itself to all our emotions; turn by turn it grows animated, it enjoys, it rests"

— Laclos, Pierre (-Ambrose-François) Choderlos de (1741-1803)

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

"She has given you besides some perspicuity, which qualifies you to distinguish interesting objects; a warmth of imagination which enables you to think with quickness; you often extract useful reflections from objects which presented none to my mind: you have a tender and a well meaning heart, yo...

— St. John de Crèvecoeur, J. Hector (1735-1813)

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)