Date: 1781

"Mind, like a bride from a nobler family, enriches matter by its union, and brings as a dower, possessions before unknown. Henceforth matter appears cloathed in a gayer and richer garment; and the fruits of this union are a new progeny, to which matter, confining its alliance to its own family, c...

— Rotheram, John (1725–1789)

Date: 1790, 1794

"Their turn of expression is a dress that hangs so gracefully on gay ideas, that you are apt to suppose that wit, a quality parsimoniously distributed in other countries, is in France as common as the gift of speech."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it--if I may so express myself--swathed from their birth, seldom exert that locomotive faculty or body of mind"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1797

In William Collins's "endeavours to embody the fleeting forms of mind, and clothe them with correspondent imagery, he is not infrequently obscure."

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