Date: 1797

"But, though his mind became clouded, his countenance remained unaltered; it was grave and thoughtful."

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

Date: 1797

"After considering these circumstances, and the words, which had just told her she was to go no further, conviction struck like lightning upon her heart; and, believing she was brought hither to be assassinated, horror chilled all her frame, and her senses forsook her."

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

Date: 1797

"In reply to this, Vivaldi only bowed, but he remarked that the stranger's countenance altered, and that some dark brooding appeared to cloud his mind, as he quitted the chamber."

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

Date: 1797

"Whether he had done so in his first assertion was a question, which had raised in Vivaldi's mind a tempest of conjecture and of horror; for, while the subject of it was too astonishing to be fully believed, it was also too dreadful, not to be apprehended even as a possibility."

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

Date: 1797

"With the society of La Pietà, Olivia had thus found an asylum such as till lately she had never dared to hope for; but, though she frequently expressed her sense of this blessing, it was seldom without tears; and Ellena observed, with some surprise and more disappointment, within a very few days...

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

Date: 1860

"The peculiarities of his father and mother were very irksome to him now they were laid bare of all the softening accompaniments of an easy prosperous home, for Tom had very clear prosaic eyes not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 2000

"The grief a loving son would feel, and of which I had no inkling when my own mother was lowered into her flinty grave, tornadoed through me at the news of the countess's death."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"Someone suggests he is in a mental fog."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"I realised how little substance any of my feelings had without the loop of listening to myself think and speak. Better to stay on this clifftop having my thoughts ripped from me by a gale."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)

Date: 2000

"They just went rolling on in their parallel curvature, only brought together by storms, like the mind and the body forever separated by the 'explanatory gap' but brought together by the storm of life."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)