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: 1792

"The understanding, it is true, may keep us from going out of drawing when we group our thoughts, or transcribe from the imagination and warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character, give the colouring."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"For it is the right use of reason alone which makes us independent of everything--excepting the unclouded reason--'Whose service is perfect freedom.'"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Such exhibitions only serve to strike the spreading fibres of vanity through the whole mind; for they neither teach children to speak fluently, nor behave gracefully."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Thrice happy she, condemned to move / Beneath the servile weight, / Whose thoughts ne'er soar one inch above / The standard of her fate"

— Taylor, Ellen (fl. 1792)

Date: 1792

"So ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793, 1797

"Then, while each hideous image to his mind, / Rises terrific, o'er a bleeding corse / Stumbling he falls."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1793, 1806

"And Truth's white bosom stampt with falsehood's stain!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1794

"While Plato explains the allegory [of Minerva and Diomed] into no more than this: How Wisdom or Reason should in like manner so dispel the mists of the mind, that it may be at liberty to discern, examine, and contemplate what is good and what is evil."

— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)

Date: 1794

"A train of gloomy ideas haunted her mind, till she fell asleep."

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