Date: 1790

"Love comes to the bosom under the gentle forms of esteem, of sympathy, of confidence: we listen with dangerous pleasure to the seducing accents of his voice, till he lifts the fatal veil which concealed him from our view, and reigns a tyrant in the soul. Reason is then an oracle no longer consul...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1797

"'Behold, what is woman!' said he--'The slave of her passions, the dupe of her senses! When pride and revenge speak in her breast, she defies obstacles, and laughs at crimes!'" "Assail but her senses; let music, for instance, touch some feeble chord of her heart, and echo to her fancy, and lo! al...

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

Date: September 5, 2011

"He [Derek Parfit] pictures his thinking self as a government minister sitting behind a large desk, who writes a question on a piece of paper and puts it in his out-tray. The minister then sits idly at the desk, twiddling his thumbs, while in some back room civil servants labor furiously, come up...

— MacFarquhar, Larissa

Date: May 20, 2013

"As this book began to veer astray, I felt that Lindemann's mind was like a sleek yacht built for exhilarating grace and speed but commandeered by moldy tyrants for mundane use as a sluggish freighter."

— Paglia, Camille (b. 1947)