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: 1774

"The attraction of the magnet is only exerted upon similar particles; and to taste the beauties of Homer it is requisite to partake his fire: but every one can relish the author who represents common life, because every one can refer to the originals from whence his ideas were taken"

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

Date: 1788

"For Virtue, with divine controul, / Collects the various powers of soul; / And lends, from her unsullied source, / The gems of thought their purest force."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"True courage in the unconquer'd soul / Yields to Compassion's mild controul; / As, the resisting frame of steel / The magnet's secret force can feel."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"The idle crowd in fashion's train, / Their trifling comment, pert reply, / Who talk so much, yet talk in vain, / How pleas'd for thee, Oh nymph, I fly! / For thine is all the wealth of mind, / Thine the unborrow'd gems of thought, / The flash of light, by souls refin'd, / From heav'n's empyreal ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"If her heart was not quite at peace, its exquisite sensibility was corrected by the influence of reason; as the quivering needle, though subject to some variations, still tends to one fixed point."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1825

"Bear thy afflictions with a patient mind; / Whose bursting heart disdains unjust controul, / Who feel'st oppression's iron in thy soul, / Who dragg'st the load of faint and feeble years, / Whose bread is anguish, and whose water tears."

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