Date: 1778, 1779

"Yes, my child, thy happiness is engraved, in golden characters, upon the tablets of my heart! and their impression is indelible; for, should the rude and deep-searching hand of Misfortune attempt to pluck them from their repository, the fleeting fabric of life would give way, and in tearing from...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"I had many witticisms to endure from the Branghtons, upon account of my staying so long with the Scotch mope, as they call him; but I attend to them very little, for my whole heart was filled with pity and concern."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Perhaps had I first seen you, in your kind and sympathising bosom I might have ventured to have reposed every secret of my soul; and then--but let me pursue my journal."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Though ev'ry beauty is her own, / And though her mind each virtue fills, / Anville,--to her power unknown, / Artless, strikes,--unconscious kills!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"'Oh, Sir,' exclaimed I, 'that you could but read my heart!--that you could but see the filial tenderness and concern with which it overflows! you would not then talk thus,--you would not then banish me your presence, and exclude me from your affection!'"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1778, 1779

"Hasten, then, my love, to bless me with thy presence, and to receive the blessings with which my fond heart overflows!"

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1780

Reason's subjects work and return home with "treasures fraught" and display before their queen their "shining spoils, which are laid up in "mental stores."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1780

"Those mental stores shall cheer the wintery hours, / And flowers unfading breathe their sweets at home.// Extracting food amid the vernal bloom, / So flies the industrious bee around the vale, / With native skill she forms the waxen comb, / To keep for wintery days the rich regale."

— Steele, Anne (1717-1778)

Date: 1782

"Cecilia was wholly unable to devise any answer to these effusions of contempt and anger; and therefore his harangue lasted without interruption, till he had exhausted all his subjects of complaint, and emptied his mind of ill-will."

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)

Date: 1782

"He must, upon no account, sustain a conversation with any spirit, lest he should appear, to his utter disgrace, interested in what is said: and when he is quite tired of his existence, from a total vacuity of ideas, he must affect a look of absence, and pretend, on the sudden, to be wholly lost ...

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)