Date: 1806

"All around / A solemn stillness seems to guard the scene, / Nursing the brood of thought--a thriving brood / In the rich mazes of the cultur'd brain."

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

Date: 1806

"Shall the caprice of nature, the deep tint / Of sultry climes, the feature varying, / Or the uncultur'd mind, endure the scourge / Of sordid tyranny, or heap the stores / Of his fair fellow man, whose ruddy cheek / Knows not the tear of pity; whose white breast / Conceals a heart, than adamant m...

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

Date: 1825

Domestic love may build her nest in the "feeling breast"

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

Date: 1860

"For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent, and sagacity persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"The days passed, and Mr Tulliver showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition: the paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful struggles, like a ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: April 1861

"My heart is like a singing bird / Whose nest is in a water'd shoot."

— Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894)

Date: 1871-2, 1874

"Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on her."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1892

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all, // And sweetest in the gale is heard."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)