Date: 1763

"After all, are we not a little in the machine style, not to be able to withdraw our love when our esteem is at an end?"

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1766

"My dear Louisa, your watch and your passions keep pace; it wants some minutes of seven; but I cou'd wish from my heart, that almost any accident might prevent this meeting"

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"Col. Dormer, though he knew the human heart, had never yet thought of taking his nieces in more active scenes of life: he had fallen into the common mistake of people past the meridian of their days, who, feeling tranquillity their greatest good, do not sufficiently reflect that it is insipid at...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1777

"She saw something like just drawing in the dark shades of his pencil, though the lines seemed a good deal exaggerated: she reflected, she doubted; but, after settling a balance in her mind, the found her own scale preponderate."

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1789

"For of calamity so long the prey, / Imagination now has lost her powers, / Nor will her fairy loom again essay / To dress affliction in a robe of flowers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1792

"For it is seldom done entirely, to speak with moderation, by the child itself; thus the master countenances falsehood, or winds the poor machine up to some extraordinary exertion, that injures the wheels, and stops the gradual improvement."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1797

"But the subtlety of self-love still eluded his enquiries, and he did not detect that pride was even at this instant of self-examination, and of critical import, the master-spring of his mind."

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

Date: 1798

"When once this generous desire of affection and esteem is raised in the mind, their exertions seem to be universal, and spontaneous: children are then no longer like machines, which require to be wound up regularly to perform certain revolutions; they are animated with a living principle, which ...

— Edgeworth, Maria

Date: 1800,1806

"Thrice he rose, and thrice / His feet recoil'd; and still the livid flame / Lengthen'd and quiver'd as the moaning wind / Pass'd thro' the rushy crevice, while his heart / Beat, like the death-watch, in his shudd'ring breast."

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