Date: 1806

"In ev'ry eye, / The living ray of waken'd intellect / Marks reason's lamp divine!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1806

"Thy pure flame / Would light the sense opake, and warm the spring / Of boundless ecstacy; while nature's laws / So violated, plead, immortal-tongu'd, / For her dark-fated children; lead them forth / From bondage infamous!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1810

An idea "too oft survey'd, / Beneath the ardent beam of Thought shall fade"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"Yes, it is beneath the constant glow of ardent imagination, that the impression, given by memory, has faded. Then it is that a good, nay even an indifferent picture, or a paper-profile of a dear lost friend, strengthens our recollection, in the same manner that retouching a copper-plate restores...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

Two cause produce the vanishing of internal images; "viz. the mind not having dwelt upon the originals of those its pictures often enough to make their image strong and vivid after long absence; --and, its too frequently casting upon such inshrined resemblances, the dazzling light of fervent med...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1814

"That a girl of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the method of reform was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became more disposed to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it...

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

Date: 1818

"Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame."

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

Date: 1825

"Yet still to humble hope enough is given / Of light from reason's lamp, and light from heaven, / To teach us what to follow, what to shun, / To bow the head and say "Thy will be done!"

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

Date: 1847

"His brightening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect."

— Brontë, Emily (1818-1848)

Date: 1860

"It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to 'the masses' who are now understood to have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth: yet so ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)