Date: 1633

"The mind, you know is like a Table-Book"

— Donne, John (1572-1631)

Date: 1697

"If we shou'd observe Pythagoras his Rule, to call our selves to an account every Evening, for the Actions and Thoughts of that Day, I believe we shou'd find many vacant spaces within the compass of a Day, which we cou'd not fill up with Thoughts."

— Burnet, Thomas (c.1635-1715)

Date: 1754

"The human soul is so far from being furnished with forms and ideas to perceive all things by, or from being impregnated, I would rather say than printed over, with the seeds of universal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of sensible qualities from without."

— St John, Henry, styled first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

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)