Date: 1667

"Too promising, too great a mind/ In so small room to be confin'd"

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"By giving thy Soul room to move: / Affording scene unto that mind, / Which is too great to be confin'd. [...]Thou mightst retire, but who e're meant / A Palace for a Tenement"

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And as in Palaces the outmost, worst / Rooms entertain our wonder at the first; / But once within the Presence-Chamber door, / We do despise what e're we saw before: / So when you with her Mind acquaintance get, / You'l hardly think upon the Cabinet."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"Thy Heart locks up my Secrets richly set, / And my Breast is thy private Cabinet."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And yet those Souls, when first they met, / Lookt out at windows through the Eyes."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"And though 'tis true she [the soul] is imprison'd here, / Yet hath she Notions of her own, / Which Sense doth only jog, awake, and clear, / But cannot at the first make known."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1667

"So unconcern'd she lives, so much above / The Rubbish of a sordid Jail, / That nothing doth her Energy improve / So much as when those structures fail."

— Philips [née Fowler], Katherine (1632-1664)

Date: 1684

"In proper Cells her large capacious Brain / The images of all things does contain, / As bright almost as were th'Ideas laid, / In the last model e'er the World was made."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: 1688

"I will be deaf and blind, and guard my Heart with Walls of Ice, and make you know, that when the Flames of true Devotion are kindled in a Heart, it puts out all other Fires; which are as ineffectual, as Candles lighted in the Face of the Sun."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

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)