Date: 1654

"We often see stones hang with drops not from any innate moisture, but from a thick air about them; so may we sometime see marble-hearted sinners seem full of contrition, but it is not from any dew of grace within but from some black clouds that impends them, which produces these sweating effects."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: w. 1796, 1799

"My soul was held up by the power of God, as the needle by the loadstone, and I did by faith, with joy draw water out of these wells of salvation."

— Osborn, Sarah (1714-1796)

Date: w. c. 1800, 1805

"These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent."

— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Date: 1890

"I've known her from an ample nation / Choose one; / Then close the valves of her attention / Like stone."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1892

"Least village boasts its blacksmith, / Whose anvil's even din / Stands symbol for the finer forge / That soundless tugs within, // Refining these impatient ores / With hammer and with blaze, / Until the designated light / Repudiate the forge."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1999

"The next day, I changed all my classmates’ names to numbers to better reflect their metal hearts."

— Offill, Jenny (b. 1968)

Date: 2010

"Yet as I lift up this / dull desert stone, the weight of it is full / of slower, longer thoughts than mind can have."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)

Date: 2010

"Be my mind, stone lying on my grave."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)

Date: July 26, 2016

"But it is true that she told none of these types of personal anecdotes that help people watching at home form impressions from mental clay."

— Haberman, Maggie (b. 1973)

Date: February 27, 2017

"And I don't want to pray, but I can picture / the plants deepening right now into the soil, / wanting to live, so I lie down among them, / in my ripped pink tank top, filthy and covered / in sweat, among red burying beetles and dirt / that's been turned and turned like a problem / in the mind."

— Limón, Ada (b. March 28, 1976)