Date: 1791

Corruption may sicken the heart

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1791, 1806

"Oh! horrid Night! / Thou prying Monitor confest! / Whose key unlocks the human breast, / And bares each avenue to mental sight!"

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

Date: 1791

"Lady Castlenorth was laying up a little magazine of literature, which she intended to open on Willoughby the next day; and her daughter was contemplating in her mind's eye, the handsome person of Willoughby, the figure they should make at Court, and the triumph there would be, when without degra...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1792

"Yet disappointed as we are, in our researches, the mind gains strength by the exercise, sufficient, perhaps, to comprehend the answers which, in another step of existence, it may receive to the anxious questions it asked, when the understanding with feeble wing was fluttering round the visible e...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Yet, when I exclaim against novels, I mean when contrasted with those works which exercise the understanding and regulate the imagination."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793, 1806

The "eye of Reason" may "cloudless shine"

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

Date: 1794

"But the latter was too deeply wounded, through the medium of her mind, to be quickly revived."

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

Date: 1794

"In the eye of fancy, she perceived the gleam of arms through the duskiness of night, the glitter of spears and helmets, and the banners floating dimly on the twilight; while now and then the blast of a distant trumpet echoed along the defile, and the signal was answered by a momentary clash of a...

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

Date: 1794

"Her first care was to guard the door of the stair-case, for which purpose she placed against it all the furniture she could move, and she was thus employed, for some time, at the end of which she had another instance how much more oppressive misfortune is to the idle, than to the busy; for, havi...

— 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)