Date: December 1790

"Perhaps the most improving exercise of the mind, confining the argument to the enlargement of the understanding, is the restless enquiries that hover on the boundary, or stretch over the dark abyss of uncertainty."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"These lively conjectures are the breezes that preserve the still lake from stagnating"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"Man has been termed, with strict propriety, a microcosm, a little world in himself."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"[A]n immoderate desire to please contracts the faculties, and immerges, to borrow the idea of a great philosopher, the soul in matter, till it becomes unable to mount on the wing of contemplation."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"Go hence, thou slave of impulse, look into the private recesses of thy heart, and take not a mote from thy brother’s eye, till thou hast removed the beam from thine own."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1791

"Each vice, to minds depraved by bondage known, / With sure contagion fastens on his own."

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

Date: 1791

"[I]mpetuous Passion's flame" may be blown to rage

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

Date: 1791

"The whirlwind wakes of uncontrouled desire"

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

Date: 1791

The "buds of Virtue" may be blasted as they blow

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

Date: 1791

Corruption may sicken the heart

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