Date: 1776

"Not that I wou'd encourage the modern philosophy, which reduces all virtue to self-interest; for if I may hazard an unborrowed simile, the liberal mind may be compared to the Nile, which enriches the soil, from its own abundance, without requiring any return."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1785

"Yon starry orbs, / Majestic ocean, flowery vales, gay groves, / Eye-wasting lawns, and heaven-attempting hills / Which bound th' horizon, and which curb the view; / All those, with beauteous imagery, awaked / My ravished soul to ecstasy untaught, / To all the transport the rapt sense can bear; /...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

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: 1921

"I know what my heart is like / Since your love died: / It is like a hollow ledge / Holding a little pool / Left there by the tide, / A little tepid pool, / Drying inward from the edge."

— Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892-1950)

Date: 2014

"No, it's a strange beach; each body is a strange beach, and if you let in the excess emotion you will recall the Atlantic Ocean breaking on our heads."

— Rankine, Claudia (b. 1963)