Date: 1796

"I then--alas, too late! dived deeper, with, then, useless investigation,--and discovered an early passion, never erased from her mind;--discovered--that I had never made her happy! that she was merely enduring, suffering me--while my whole confiding soul was undividedly hers!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1797

"Their [young persons'] minds are like a sheet of white paper, which takes any impression that it is proposed to make upon it."

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1798

"There is none comes to the school of Christ suiting the philosopher's word ut tabula rasa, as blank paper, to receive his doctrine; but, on the contrary, all scribbled and blurred with such base habits as these, malice, hypocrisy, envy, &c."

— Leighton, Robert (1611-1684)

Date: 1798

"Therefore the first work is to raze out these, to cleanse and purify the heart from these blots, these foul characters, that it may receive the impression of the image of God."

— Leighton, Robert (1611-1684)

Date: 1800

"The great Mr. Locke, and several other ingenious philosophers, have represented the human intellect, antecedent to its intercourse with external objects, as a tabula rasa, or a substance capable of receiving any impressions, but upon which no original impressions of any kind are stamped."

— Smellie, William (1740-1795)

Date: February, 1821

"I said to myself, 'This is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper.'"

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

Date: 1823

"His mind was in its original state of white paper."

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1823

"His pen was not less erring than his heart"

— Lamb, Charles (1775-1834)

Date: 1825

"In this respect his mind resembled a well arranged volume; in which every subject forms a separate section, and each view of that subject a separate page."

— Dwight, Sereno Edwards (1786-1850) and William Theodore Dwight (1795-1865)