Date: 1762-1763
"Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unencumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak ...
preview | full record— Adams, Abigail (1744-1818)
Date: 1771
"If they had made no impression upon his heart"
preview | full record— Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790)
Date: November 28, 1783
"Our Maker has given us this faithful internal monitor [the conscience], and if you always obey it, you will always be prepared for the end of the world, or for a more certain event, which is death."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1785
"Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1820
"And they [Stewart, Tracy, Cabanis] ask why may not the mode of action called thought, have been given to a material organ of peculiar structure, as that of magnetism is to the needle, or of elasticity to the spring by a particular manipulation of the steel."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1820
"When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as I do a weight which human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance, in these cases, is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1829
"Death is only the removal of an immortal soul from dead matter, which many have considered merely as a clog to the soul."
preview | full record— Balfour, Walter (1776-1852)
Date: 1829
"And if the man is as complete without the body, as he is without the house he resides in, the immortal soul ought to be thankful when it gets quit of the body."
preview | full record— Balfour, Walter (1776-1852)