Date: 1790

"His disturbed mind resembled a tempestuous flood, whose waves arise dark and turbulent, except where the sun-beam throws a line of trembling radiance across their agitated surface."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"She lamented that Mr. Seymour's character, which appeared open, liberal, and elevated, should so ill bear a close inspection; and that his mind resembled one of those pictures which must be viewed by the dim light of a taper; since their coarse and glaring colours, which attract the eye in the d...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1791, 1794

"When fancy paints to me the good old man stooping to raise the weeping penitent, while every tear from her eye is numbered by drops from his bleeding heart, my bosom glows with honest indignation, and I wish for power to extirpate those monsters of seduction from the earth."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"Sometimes a gleam of hope would play about her heart when she thought of her parents--'They cannot surely,' she would say, 'refuse to forgive me; or should they deny their pardon to me, they win not hate my innocent infant on account of its mother's errors.'"

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"Pardon me, ye dear spirits of benevolence, whose benign smiles and chearful-giving hand have strewed sweet flowers on many a thorny path through which my way-ward fate forced me to pass; think not, that, in condemning the unfeeling texture of the human heart, I forget the spring from whence flow...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"A gleam of joy breaks in on my benighted soul while I reflect that you cannot, will not refuse your protection to the heart-broken."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1794

"For you, my young friend, may the sun always shine as brightly as at this moment; may your own conduct always give you the sunshine of benevolence and reason united!"

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

Date: 1794

"The gloom of these shades, their solitary silence, except when the breeze swept over their summits, the tremendous precipices of the mountains, that came partially to the eye, each assisted to raise the solemnity of Emily's feelings into awe; she saw only images of gloomy grandeur, or of dreadfu...

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

Date: 1794

"A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then endeavoured to recollect her thoughts, and to reason herself into composure; but human reason cannot establish her laws on subjects, lost in the obscurity of imagination, any more than...

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

Date: 1796

"He pronounced the most severe sentences upon offenders, which the moment after compassion induced him to mitigate: he undertook the most daring enterprizes, which the fear of their consequences soon obliged him to abandon: his inborn genius darted a brilliant light upon subjects the most obscure...

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)