Date: 1803

The muse "beams a visionary day: / Bright as the magic torch she early gave / To light thy ven'trous way, through fancy's secret cave."

— Hunter [née Home], Anne (1742-1821)

Date: 1806

"In ev'ry eye, / The living ray of waken'd intellect / Marks reason's lamp divine!"

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

Date: 1806

"Thy pure flame / Would light the sense opake, and warm the spring / Of boundless ecstacy; while nature's laws / So violated, plead, immortal-tongu'd, / For her dark-fated children; lead them forth / From bondage infamous!"

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

Date: 1810

An idea "too oft survey'd, / Beneath the ardent beam of Thought shall fade"

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

"Yes, it is beneath the constant glow of ardent imagination, that the impression, given by memory, has faded. Then it is that a good, nay even an indifferent picture, or a paper-profile of a dear lost friend, strengthens our recollection, in the same manner that retouching a copper-plate restores...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1810

Two cause produce the vanishing of internal images; "viz. the mind not having dwelt upon the originals of those its pictures often enough to make their image strong and vivid after long absence; --and, its too frequently casting upon such inshrined resemblances, the dazzling light of fervent med...

— Seward, Anna (1742-1809)

Date: 1814

"Her steady lamp shall pour its guiding ray, / And shed on lowliest minds celestial day."

— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)

Date: 1814

"Death reveals his bright associate Truth,/ (Whose rays the new-departed soul illume, / Like those eternal lamps that light the tomb,)"

— Grant [née MacVicar], Anne (1755-1838)

Date: 1814

"That a girl of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the method of reform was not wonderful; and Fanny soon became more disposed to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it...

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)

Date: 1818

"Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame."

— Austen, Jane (1775-1817)