Date: Trans. c. 1425

"The gate also of mynde is schitt, þat it haþ no mynde of þe world ne of his owne sensible feelynge."

— St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)

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: 1694

"What your own sentiments are, I know not, but I cannot without pity and resentment reflect, that those Glorious Temples on which your kind Creator has bestow'd such exquisite workmanship, shou'd enshrine no better than Egyptian Deities; be like a garnish'd Sepulchre, which for all it's glitterin...

— Astell, Mary (1666-1731)

Date: 1758

"Do not variegate the Structure of your Walls with Eubaean and Spartan Stone: but adorn both the Minds of the Citizens, and of those who govern them, by the Grecian Education."

— Carter, Elizabeth (1717-1806)

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: 1775

"Momus well wished a window in every man's breast. Physiognomists pretend they can take a peep through the features of the face; but this is too abstruse a science to answer the general purposes of life; besides that education may render such knowledge doubtful, as in the case of Socrates."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"Good sense is a judicious mechanic, who can produce beauty and convenience out of suitable means; but Genius (I speak with reverence of the immeasurable distance) bears some remote resemblance to the divine architect, who produced perfection of beauty without any visible materials, 'who spake, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"To argue from experience, it should seem as if the human mind, averse to thought, could only be opened by necessity; for, when it can take opinions on trust, it gladly lets the spirit lie quiet in its gross tenement."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)