Date: 1763
"The heart of a woman does, I imagine, naturally gravitate towards a handsome, well-dressed, well-bred fellow, without enquiry into his mental qualities."
preview | full record— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)
Date: 1777
"The philosophical doctrine of the slow recession of bodies from the sun, is a lively image of the reluctance with which we first abandon the light of virtue."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"For it is in moral as in natural things, the motion in minds as well as bodies is accelerated by a nearer approach to the centre to which they are tending."
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"The vast conceptions which enable a true genius to ascend the sublimest heights, may be so connected with the stronger passions, as to give it a natural tendency to fly off from the strait line of regularity; till good sense, acting on the fancy, makes it gravitate powerfully towards that virtue...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1778, 1779
"Far be it from me," said Lord Orville, "to dispute the magnetic power of beauty, which irresistibly draws and attracts whatever has soul and sympathy."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: 1788
"Of home! dear scene, whose ties can bind / With sacred force the human mind / That feels each little absence pain, / And lives but to return again / To that lov'd spot, however far, / Points, like the needle to its star; / That native shed which first we knew, / Where first the sweet affections ...
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1788
"True courage in the unconquer'd soul / Yields to Compassion's mild controul; / As, the resisting frame of steel / The magnet's secret force can feel."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)
Date: 1790
"If her heart was not quite at peace, its exquisite sensibility was corrected by the influence of reason; as the quivering needle, though subject to some variations, still tends to one fixed point."
preview | full record— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)