Date: October 20, 1752

It is bad manners for Richardson's heroines to "declare all they think [since] fig leaves are necessary for our minds as our bodies."

— Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley [née Lady Mary Pierrepont] (1689-1762)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1790, 1794

"Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it--if I may so express myself--swathed from their birth, seldom exert that locomotive faculty or body of mind"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1797

In William Collins's "endeavours to embody the fleeting forms of mind, and clothe them with correspondent imagery, he is not infrequently obscure."

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

Date: 1944; 2018

"It is pleasanter to be five years older and beautiful than status quo and under par, but I must force my loose mind into its overalls and get going."

— O'Connor, Flannery (1925-1964)

Date: November 14, 2019

"If you're just well enough to drag yourself to your place of employment (your thoughts still a sound cloud of distress, but the volume on low), or if your depression takes the form more of an itchy sweater than a leaden dentist's apron (which is to say, anxiety), you are forever and always perfo...

— Senior, Jennifer