Date: 1784

Vanity is more a man's ruling passion than a woman's

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

Date: 1784

Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair, / Are the fond visions of thy early day, / Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, / Bid all thy fairy colours fade away!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1784

Go, cruel tyrant of the human breast! / To other hearts, thy burning arrows bear; / Go, where fond hope, and fair illusion rest!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1784

"I hurry forward, passion's helplesss slave! And scorning reason's mild and sober light, / Pursue the path that leads me to the grave!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"Does matter govern spirit? or is mind / Degraded by the form to which 'tis joined?"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"These propensities gave the colour to her mind, before the passions began to exercise their tyrannic sway, and particularly pointed out those which the soil would have a tendency to nurse."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"He had been the slave of beauty, the captive of sense; love he ne'er had felt; the mind never rivetted the chain, nor had the purity of it made the body appear lovely in his eyes."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Where her ruling passions, (the love of admiration and excessive vanity) did not interfere, she was sometimes generous and sometimes friendly."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"Emmeline was unable to reply; and Miss Galton finding no gratification to her curiosity, which, mingled with envious malignity, had long been her ruling passion, was obliged to quit the unhappy Emmeline; which was indeed the only favour she could do her."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"But you, who feel not any portion of the flame that devours me, can cooly argue, while my heart is torn in pieces; and deign not even to make any allowance for the unguarded sallies of unconquerable passion!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)