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: 1654

"The eyes and the ears are the inlets or doors of the soul, through which innumerable objects enter."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: 1654

"The certainty that that time will come, together with the uncertainty, how, where, and when, should make us so to number our days to apply our hearts to wisdom, that when we are put out of these houses of clay we may be sure of an everlasting habitation that fades not away."

— Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672)

Date: 1774

"Some have imagined that we are induced to acquiesce with greater patience in our own lot, by beholding pictures of life tinged with deeper horrors, and loaded with more excruciating calamities; as, to a person suddenly emerging out of a dark room, the faintest glimmering of twilight assumes a lu...

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

Date: 1774

Romances "ventilate the mind by sudden gusts of passion; and prevent the stagnation of thought, by a fresh infusion of dissimilar ideas"

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

Date: 1774

"The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance"

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

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: 1781

"The peculiar design of this publication is, to impress devotional feelings as early as possible on the infant mind; fully convinced as the author is, that they cannot be impressed too soon, and that a child, to feel the full force of the idea of God, ought never to remember the time when he had ...

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

Date: 1781

"The mother loveth her little child; she bringeth it up on her knees; she nourisheth its body with food; she feedeth its mind with knowledge."

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

Date: 1790, 1794

"You, my dear friend, who have felt the tender attachments of love and friendship, and the painful anxieties which absence occasions, even amidst scenes of variety and pleasure; who understand the value at which tidings from those we love is computed in the arithmetic of the heart."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)