Date: 1774

"Let me, therfore, most earnestly recommend to you, to hoard up, while you can, a great stock of knowledge; for though, during the dissipation of your youth, you may not have occasion to spend much of it; yet, you may depend upon it, that a time will come, when you will want it to maintain you. P...

— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Date: 1777

"My pineal gland could you but view, / You'd scarce believe your eyes see true: / There's such a jumble; good and bad, / All sorts of thoughts, may there be had; / Like broker's shop, where we may find / Goods that belong to half mankind."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1777

"Thus oft, from shop of brain, I try / To throw the dirt and rubbish by; / But still they gain their former state, / Or leave a vacuum in the pate."

— Savage, Mary (fl. 1763-1777)

Date: 1782

"Some philosopher--I forget who--wished for a window in his breast--that the world might see his heart;--he could only be a great fool, or a very good man:--I will believe the latter, and recommend him to your imitation."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"Oh nature!--oh heart!--why does the voice of distress so forcibly knock at the door of hearts?"

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"I will aim at both sides of him--his pity and his pride--which, alas!--the last I mean, finds a first-floor in the breast of every son of Adam."

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1782

"Youth is naturally prone to vanity--such is the weakness of Human Nature, that pride has a fortress in the best of hearts--I know no person that possesses a better than Johnny W--e--but although flattery is poison to youth, yet truth obliges me to confess that your correspondence betrays no symp...

— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)

Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"To argue from experience, it should seem as if the human mind, averse to thought, could only be opened by necessity; for, when it can take opinions on trust, it gladly lets the spirit lie quiet in its gross tenement."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"Go hence, thou slave of impulse, look into the private recesses of thy heart, and take not a mote from thy brother’s eye, till thou hast removed the beam from thine own."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)