Date: w. c. 1800, 1805

"These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent."

— Warren, Mercy Otis (1728-1814)

Date: 1810, 1820

"Though slow to entertain thoughts of love, as soon as he perceives the partiality of his ward, it enters his breast like a torrent when the flood-gates are opened."

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

Date: 1814

"The mind of a child is like the acorn; its powers are folded up, they do not yet appear, but they are all there."

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

Date: 1814

"Instruction is the food of the mind; it is like the dew and the rain and the rich soil."

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

Date: 1854

"And it is but a twin fact with this, that in France alone woman has had a vital influence on the development of literature; in France alone the mind of woman has passed like an electric current through the language, making crisp and definite what is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1854

"The former have more exaltation, perhaps more nobility of sentiment, and less consciousness in their intellectual activity--less of the 'femme auteur', which was Rousseau's horror in Madame d'Epinay; but the latter have a richer fund of ideas--not more ingenuity, but the materials of an addition...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1854

"Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness."

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1854

"The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required for spontaneous activity; the voltaic-pile is not strong enough to produce crystallizations; phantasms of great ideas float through her mind, but she has not ...

— Eliot, George (1819-1880)

Date: 1893

A woman's nature "is like a great house full of rooms ... and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes."

— Wharton, Edith (1862-1937)