Date: 1758

"Let inward beauty charm the mental sight; / Let godlike Reason, beaming bright, / Chase far away each gloomy shade, / Till VIRTUE's heav'nly form display'd / Alone shall captivate my soul, / And her divinest love possess me whole!"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

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...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1778, 1779

"As soon would I discuss the effect of sound with the deaf, or the nature of colours with the blind, as aim at illuminating with conviction a mind so warped by prejudice, so much the slave of unruly and illiberal passions."

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

Date: 1777, 1780

"While he prayed, he felt an enlargement of heart beyond what he had ever experienced before; all idle fears were dispersed, and his heart glowed with divine love and affiance: He seemed raised above the world and all its pursuits."

— Reeve, Clara (1729-1807)

Date: 1790

"Julia retired from the scene with regret. She was enchanted with the new world that was now exhibited to her, and she was not cool enough to distinguish the vivid glow of imagination from the colours of real bliss."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1792

"The business of education in this case, is only to conduct the shooting tendrils to a proper pole; yet after laying precept upon precept, without allowing a child to acquire judgement itself, parents expect them to act in the same manner by this borrowed fallacious light, as if they had illumina...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1797

"This place, perhaps, infests my mind with congenial gloom, for I find that, at this moment, there is scarcely a superstition too dark for my credulity."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1803

The muse "beams a visionary day: / Bright as the magic torch she early gave / To light thy ven'trous way, through fancy's secret cave."

— Hunter [née Home], Anne (1742-1821)

Date: September, 1934

"This weight of knowledge dark on the brain is never / To be burnt out like fever, // But will slowly, with speech to tell the way and ease it, / Will sink into the blood, and warm, and slowly / Move in the veins, and murmur, and come at length / To the tongue's tip and the finger's tip most lowl...

— Miles, Josephine (1911-1985)

Date: November 11, 1967

"The answer is yes, but there is nothing wrong with having an oblique heart, it is a lighthouse, a compass, wisdom, sharp instinct, experience of death, the power to divine a disquieting but blissful lack of adjustment, because I am discovering that my own maladjustment stems from my origins."

— Lispector, Clarice (1920-1977)