Date: December 1790

"The vulgar have not the power of emptying their mind of the only ideas they imbibed whilst their hands were employed; they cannot quickly turn from one kind of life to another."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1791, 1794

"I mean not to extenuate the faults of those unhappy women who fall victims to guilt and folly; but surely, when we reflect how many errors we are ourselves subject to, how many secret faults lie hid in the recesses of our hearts, which we should blush to have brought into open day (and yet those...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1794

"No--long they lived great nature to explore, / Their minds enriching with poetic store."

— Pointon, Priscilla [AKA Priscilla Pickering] (c. 1740-1801)

Date: 1794

"The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1797

"'If you are under any promise of secresy,' interrupted Vivaldi, 'I forbid you to tell this wonderful tale, which, however, seems somewhat too big to rest within your brain.'"

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1797

"Having said this, I am prepared to meet whatever suffering you shall inflict upon me; but be assured, that my own voice never shall sanction the evils to which I may be subjected, and that the immortal love of justice, which fills all my heart, will sustain my courage no less powerfully than the...

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1798

"In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other."

— Edgeworth, Maria

Date: 1798

"Admitting the justice of these assertions, we see that memory to great men is but a subordinate servant, a treasurer who receives, and is expected to keep faithfully whatever is committed to his care; and not only to preserve faithfully all deposits, but to produce them at the moment they are wa...

— Edgeworth, Maria

Date: 1799

"Nor seldom Indolence these lawns among / Fixes her turf-built seat; and wears the garb / Of deep philosophy, and museful sits, / In dreamy twilight of the vacant mind, / Soothed by the whispering shade; for soothing soft / The shades; and vistas lengthening into air, / With moonbeam rainbows ti...

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