Date: 1700
"Affliction, the sincerest Friend, the frankest Monitor, the best Instructer and indeed the only useful School that Women are ever put to, rouses her understanding, opens her Eyes, fixes her Attention, and diffuses such a Light, such a Joy into her Mind, as not only Informs her better, but Entert...
preview | full record— Astell, Mary (1666–1731)
Date: 1700
"She will discern a time when her Sex shall be no bar to the best Employments, the highest Honor; a time when that distinction, now so much us'd to her Prejudice, shall be no more, but provided she is not wanting to her self, her Soul shall shine as bright as the greatest Heroe's."
preview | full record— Astell, Mary (1666–1731)
Date: 1702
It is "most consonant to Reason to think this [LIfe] is only a State of Probation, and that the dispensation of Rewards and Punishments, is reserv'd for a Future Life; there being no other way to reconcile the partial distribution of things here, to that order which we know is agreeable to the Di...
preview | full record— Trotter, Catherine, later Cockburn, (1674?-1749)
Date: 1758
"But when, in Parties of Conversation, she glows by the Beams of Reason, then command her [the soul] to speak from Inspiration and utter the Oracles of Justice [like a Grasshopper]."
preview | full record— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)
Date: 1774
"The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance"
preview | full record— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)
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
"If I may be allowed to change the allusion so soon, I would say, that the passions also resemble fires, which are friendly and beneficial when under proper direction, but if suffered to blaze without restraint, they carry devastation along with them, and, if totally extinguished, leave the benig...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1777
"When a nation begins to emerge from a state of mental darkness, and to strike out the first rudiments of improvement, it chalks out a few strong but incorrect sketches, gives the rude out-lines of general art, and leaves the filling up to the leisure of happier days, and the refinement of more e...
preview | full record— More, Hannah (1745-1833)
Date: 1786
"Remember (continued he) that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air."
preview | full record— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)