page 3 of 3     per page:
sorted by:

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)

preview | full record

Date: 1757

"And whatever any talk of (the rasa tabula,) an indifferency by nature, to virtue or vice: never could I find any such thing; but all men inclined the wrong way: and abundance of work, by discipline, and the grace of God, to make any one better than the rest."

— Jenks, Benjamin (bap. 1648, d. 1724)

preview | full record

Date: September 1, 1759.

" Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

preview | full record

Date: 1765

"Do thou O Tablet, either both, or nothing; either let thy words and sense go together, or be thy bosom a rasa tabula."

— Warburton, William (1698-1779)

preview | full record

Date: 1771

"For were that mind, what some suppose, a mere tabula rasa upon its first coming into the world, a pure and perfect blank, without one single impression; who can deny that it would be right, that it would be humane and wise, to make, in the earliest moments, those impressions upon it, whic...

— Dodd, William (1729-1777)

preview | full record

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)

preview | full record

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)

preview | full record

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.