Date: 1774

"Some have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot, by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lu...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1775

"Momus well wished a window in every man's breast. Physiognomists pretend they can take a peep through the features of the face; but this is too abstruse a science to answer the general purposes of life; besides that education may render such knowledge doubtful, as in the case of Socrates."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"My pineal gland could you but view, / You'd scarce believe your eyes see true: / There's such a jumble; good and bad, / All sorts of thoughts, may there be had; / Like broker's shop, where we may find / Goods that belong to half mankind."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1777

"Thus oft, from shop of brain, I try / To throw the dirt and rubbish by; / But still they gain their former state, / Or leave a vacuum in the pate."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1777

"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1780

A friend's "influence hovers o'er the panting heart ... Till the pain'd, prison'd mind shall rise, / And drop her feeble mansion in the dust, / To claim thy promis'd bliss beyond the skies"

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"Through the night's still air / The sound of human voices, and the clank / Of iron hoofs, reveal'd a scene at once, / That almost shook his soul from her frail tenement."

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1782

"What Addison has said of the Ways of Heaven, may with much more propriety & accuracy be applied to the the 'Mind of Man which indeed, is Dark & Intricate, Filled with wild Mazes, & perplexed with Error.''"

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

Date: 1782

"The life I led at the cottage was the life of a savage; no intercourse with society, no consolation from books; my mind locked up, every source dried of intellectual delight, and no enjoyment in my power but from sleep and from food."

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