Date: 1782

"A strong sense of DUTY, a fervent desire to ACT RIGHT, were the ruling characteristics of her mind: her affluence she therefore considered as a debt contracted with the poor, and her independence, as a tie upon her liberality to pay it with interest."

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

Date: 1782

"'Put me, if you please, to some trial!' cried Cecilia, with the virtuous courage of a self-acquitting conscience."

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

Date: 1782

"All that pride could demand, and all to which ambition could aspire, all that happiness could cover or the most scrupulous delicacy exact, in her I found united; and while my heart was enslaved by her charms, my understanding exulted in its fetters."

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

Date: 1782

"[A]cquainted ere you meet that you were to meet him no more, your heart would be all softness and grief, and at the very moment when tenderness should be banished from your intercourse, it would bear down all opposition of judgment, spirit, and dignity: you would hang upon every word, because ev...

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

Date: 1782

"Do not, then, wish me ill, ill as I have seemed to merit of you, for my own heart is almost broken by the tyranny I have been compelled to practice upon yours."

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

Date: 1782

"Passion not merely banished his justice, but clouded his reason, and I soon left the room, that at least I might not hear the aspersions he forbid me to answer."

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

Date: 1782

"Perish the barb'rous maxims of the East, / Which basely wou'd enslave the free-born mind, / And plunder it of the best gift of Heav'n, / Its liberty!"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1783, 1810

"As when thou call'st the shuddering thoughts to mourn / O'er talents wither'd in the untimely urn; / To grieve that Penury's resistless storm / Beat cold and deadly o'er the shrinking form, / Where mighty Genius had those powers enshrined, / Whose reign is boundless o'er each feeling mind; / To ...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1784

Vanity is more a man's ruling passion than a woman's

— Cowley [née Parkhouse], Hannah (1743-1809)

Date: 1784

Ah! poor humanity! so frail, so fair, / Are the fond visions of thy early day, / Till tyrant passion, and corrosive care, / Bid all thy fairy colours fade away!"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)