Date: 1754

"I wish this ugly word foreign were blotted out of my vocabulary; out of my memory, rather"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"Proceed, child, your mind is the unsullied book of nature: Turn to another Leaf"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"Sir Charles Grandison's heart is the book of heaven-- May I not study it?"

— Richardson, Samuel (bap. 1689, d. 1761)

Date: 1754

"And so Dr. Edwards remarks of Socinus, that Adam, according to Him, had only the Faculty of Understanding, but none of the Accomplishments of it: His Mind being a pure rasa tabula, capable indeed of any Impressions, but having no Characters of Wisdom engraven upon it, by the Finger of God, when ...

— Holloway, Benjamin (1690/1-1759)

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: 1755

"When Love's once united, no Tyrant shall part / Nor can time efface what is grav'd on my heart."

— Mendez, Moses (1690 - c.1758)

Date: 1755

"Why did I not / Repent, while yet my Crimes were decibel! / Ere they had struck their Colours thro' my Soul, / As black as Night or Hell!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1756-9

"From their cradle she instilled into them the most perfect maxims of piety, and contempt of the world. the ancient Romans dreaded nothing more in the education of youth than their being ill taught the first principles of the sciences; it being more difficult to unlearn the errours then imbibed, ...

— Butler, Alban (1709-1773)

Date: 1756

"This heart is become a mere rasa tabula; you must help it to the [GREEK CHARACTERS], you must lay in it the foundation of natural religion, (i.e. "the dictates of common sense, for natural religion, according to Mr. H. is nothing else,) if you would raise the superstr...

— Patten, Thomas (1714-1790)

Date: 1746, 1757

"Shall He, to God / Dear as his Eye and Heart, engraven there / Deep from Eternity; alone Belov'd, / Alone Begotten! say, shall He become / A Man of Grief--for Man?"

— Thompson, William (bap. 1712, d.c. 1766)