Date: 1762

"One only hope remains, that you, my first and dearest friend, will not abandon me; that whatever cloud of melancholy may hang over my mind, yet you will still bear with me, and remove your abode to a place where I may have the consolation of your company."

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1763

"The once smiling scene has a melancholy gloom, which strikes a damp through my inmost soul."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1767

"How transitory have been all my pleasures! the recollection of them dies on my memory, like the departing colours of the rainbow, which fades under the eye of the beholder, and leaves not a trace behind."

— Sheridan [née Chamberlaine], Frances (1724-1766)

Date: 1776

"I really begin to think that his heart is 'soused in snow,' as Madame de l'Enclos says of Sevigné, which neither your bright eyes or mine can thaw."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1778, 1779

If "I may now judge of the time to come, by the present state of my mind, the calm will be succeeded by a storm, of which I dread the violence"

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"He went, and presently returning, produced a great quantity of hair, in such a nasty condition, that I was amazed she would take it; and the man as he delivered it to her, found it impossible to keep his countenance; which she had no sooner observed, than all her stormy passions were again raised."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"The first fortnight that I passed here, was so quiet, so serene, that it gave me reason to expect a settled calm during my stay; but if I may now judge of the time to come, by the present state of my mind, the calm will be succeeded by a storm, of which I dread the violence!"

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"Yet oh!--shall I not, in this last farewell, which thou wilt not read till every stormy passion is extinct,--and the kind grave has embosomed all my sorrows,--shall I not offer to the man once so dear to me, a ray of consolation to those afflictions he has in reserve?"

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

Date: 1782

"Passion not merely banished his justice, but clouded his reason, and I soon left the room, that at least I might not hear the aspersions he forbid me to answer."

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

Date: 1788

"Mary observed his character, and wrote down a train of reflections, which these observations led her to make; these reflections received a tinge from her mind; the present state of it, was that kind of painful quietness which arises from reason clouded by disgust; she had not yet learned to be r...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)