Date: 1785

Virtue is like a "lowly creeping, modest and yet fair" plant that thrives most "where little seen"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1785

Man in society is like a flower: "'Tis there alone / His faculties expanded in full bloom/ Shine out"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

Date: 1786

"Like caterpillars dangling under trees / By slender threads, and swinging in the breeze, / Which filthily bewray and sore disgrace / The boughs in which are bred the unseemly race, / While every worm industriously weaves / And winds his web about the rivell'd leaves; / So numerous are the follie...

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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: April 5, 1781, 1788

"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

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)