Date: April 20, 1796

"Ere yet we were, / Our finer tones of mind some guardian spirit / Touch'd into harmony; and, when we met, / Th' according strings struck forth a sound so sweet, / That heav'n itself might listen! love! ev'n love, / That brand of discord, burns within our bosoms, / Pale—cold—before the steady fla...

— Lee, Sophia (bap. 1750, d. 1824)

Date: 1797

"The early breeze sighing among the foliage, that waved high over the path, and the hollow dashing of distant waters, he listened to with complacency, for these were sounds which soothed yet promoted his melancholy mood; and he sometimes rested to gaze upon the scenery around him, for this too wa...

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

Date: 1797

"'Behold, what is woman!' said he--'The slave of her passions, the dupe of her senses! When pride and revenge speak in her breast, she defies obstacles, and laughs at crimes!'" "Assail but her senses; let music, for instance, touch some feeble chord of her heart, and echo to her fancy, and lo! al...

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

Date: 1797

"Whatever might be her failings, they were effectually concealed by the general benevolence of her heart, and the harmony of her mind; a harmony, not the effect of torpid feelings, but the accomplishment of correct and vigilant judgment."

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

Date: 1860

"If she had felt that she was entirely wrong and that Tom had been entirely right, she could sooner have recovered more inward harmony, but now her penitence and submission were constantly obstructed by resentment that would present itself to her no otherwise than as just.'"

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1860

"But Maggie who had little more power of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in silence."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1892

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all, // And sweetest in the gale is heard."

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)

Date: 1993

"I didn't need to speak, I could lay thoughts out in his mind like they were a sheet."

— Campion, Jane (b. 1954)

Date: 2010

"A thought to mind, so to the string / plucked, or touched, or bowed, the music is, / a wrinkling of the air as immaterial / and brief as sunlight glancing on a wave."

— Le Guin, Ursula (b. 1929)

Date: 2017

"And my brain is like an orchestra / Playing on, insane"

— Lenker, Adrianne