Date: 1754

"She taught me to cultivate simplicity, and to guard my mind against every the smallest degree of affectation"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1754

"The fear of false ridicule was from my infancy plucked up by the roots"

— Fielding, Sarah (1710-1768) and Jane Collier (bap. 1715, d. 1755)

Date: 1755

"I remember upon my having a Fit of Illness, my Mother, who was apprehensive of my Death, and consequently, thro' excessive Fondness, us'd all Means to prevent it that lay within her Power, sent me to Thorly, in Hertfordshire, the Seat of Dr. Hales, an eminent Physician and Relation, with a Desig...

— Charke [née Cibber; other married name Sacheverell], Charlotte [alias Mr Brown] (1713-1760)

Date: 1762

"An idle mind, like fallow ground, is the soil for every weed to grow in; in it vice strengthens, the seed of every vanity flourishes unmolested and luxuriant; discontent, malignity, ill humour, spread far and wide, and the mind becomes a chaos, which it is beyond human power to call into order a...

— Scott [née Robinson], Sarah (1720-1795)

Date: 1762-1763

"Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unencumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak ...

— Adams, Abigail (1744-1818)

Date: 1762

"Reflect, before the fatal Ax / My threatned Doom has wrought: / Nor sacrifice to sensual Taste / The nobler Growth of Thought."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

Date: 1773

Souls may be ripened in "our northern sky"

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

Date: 1773

"Human nature is ever liable to corruption, and has in it the seeds of every vice, as well as of every virtue; and the first will be continually shooting forth and growing up, if not carefully watched and rooted out as fast as they appear."

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1773

Toil and danger "feed and ripen minds" (not "meats and drinks" or "balmy airs, and vernal suns and showers")

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

Date: 1776

"As chaste, as delicate, believe me Lucy, as the opening rose, shou'd be the female heart."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)