Date: 1784

"As a piece of ground which is negligently cultivated, produces abundance of noxious weeds, so in the soul of an indolent man over-run with numberless vicious passions."

— Fenn [née Frere], Ellenor (1744-1813)

Date: 1785

"Such rapture filled Lactilla's vacant soul, / When the bright Moralist, in softness dressed, / Opes all the glories of the mental world, / Deigns to direct the infant thought, to prune / The budding sentiment, uprear the stalk / Of feeble fancy, bid idea live, / Woo the abstracted spirit form i...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1787

The young mind is an "opening flower" that may be beautified by cultivation

— Wallis, Hannah (fl. 1787)

Date: 1788

"For they have keen affections, kind desires, / Love strong as death, and active patriot fires; / All the rude energy, the fervid flame, / Of high-souled passions, and ingenuous shame: / Strong but luxuriant virtues boldly shoot / From the wild vigour of a savage root."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1788

"These various movements of her mind were not commented on, nor were the luxuriant shoots restrained by culture."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"An extreme dislike took root in her mind; the sound of his name made her turn sick; but she forgot all, listening to Ann's cough, and supporting her languid frame."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Her delicacy did not restrain her, for her dislike to her husband had taken root in her mind long before she knew Henry."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"Nothing was a stronger proof of the deep root which his passion had taken in his heart, than the influence Emmeline had obtained over his ungovernable and violent spirit, hitherto unused to controul, and accustomed from his infancy to exert over his own family the most boundless despotism."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"The seeds of jealousy and mistrust thus skillfully sown, could hardly fail of taking root in an heart so full of sensibility, and a temper so irritable as his."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)