Date: 1788-89
"According to Mr. Locke, the soul is a mere rasa tabula, an empty recipient, a mechanical blank."
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)
Date: 1788-89
"According to Plato, she [the soul] is an ever-written tablet, a plenitude of forms, a vital and intellectual energy."
preview | full record— Taylor, Thomas (1758-1835)
Date: 1788
"But in general, I know of no method of getting money, not even that of robbing for it upon the highway, which has so direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility."
preview | full record— Newton, John (1725-1807)
Date: February 1791
"Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all."
preview | full record— Paine, Thomas (1737-1809)
Date: 1794
"Therefore I take the mind or soul of men to be so perfectly indifferent to receive all impressions, as a rasa tabula, or white paper, &c."
preview | full record— Morell, Thomas (1703-1784)
Date: 1795
"The infant mind has been compared to a tabula rasa, or sheet of clean paper: but there is this essential difference, as hath been well observed, between the opposite objects of comparison they are not both equally Indifferent to the inscription which they are to bear."
preview | full record— Napleton, John (1738/9-1817)
Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)
"The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the paper: but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. Johnson, (Idler, No. 74.) 'that what is twice read, is commonly better remember...
preview | full record— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)
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."
preview | full record— Godwin, William (1756-1836)