Date: 1788

"'Father of Mercies, compose this troubled spirit: do I indeed wish it to be composed---to forget my Henry?' the 'my', the pen was directly drawn across in an agony."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"But in general, I know of no method of getting money, not even that of robbing for it upon the highway, which has so direct a tendency to efface the moral sense, to rob the heart of every gentle and humane disposition, and to harden it, like steel, against all impressions of sensibility."

— Newton, John (1725-1807)

Date: 1788

"When Rochely got home, he set about examining the state of his heart exactly as he would have examined the check book of one of his customers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"My Lord, my present concern is of a very different nature; and I do assure and protest to your Lordship that no time nor intreaties nor persuasion will erase and obliterate and wipe away from my mind, the injury and prejudice the parties have done me, by thus."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"Ah! hide for ever from my sight / The faithless flatterer Hope--whose pencil, gay, / Portrays some vision of delight, / Then bids the fairy tablet fade away; / While in dire contrast, to mine eyes / Thy phantoms, yet more hideous, rise, / And Memory draws, from Pleasure's wither'd flower, / Corr...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1790

"'Tis God's decree engrav'd upon the heart / To make us wait with patience, till he comes, / Undraws the curtain, and dispels the gloom, / And takes us to his bosom, and rewards / Our constancy and truth."

— Hurdis, James (1763-1801)

Date: 1790

"[W]hile I live, your generosity and valour shall be engraven on my heart"

— Reynolds, Frederick (1764-1841)

Date: 1790

"But her efforts to erase him from her remembrance were ineffectual."

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

Date: 1790, 1794

He was allowed to do so, and read it till every word was imprinted on his memory; and after enjoying the sad luxury of holding it that night on his bosom, was forced the next morning to relinquish his treasure."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1791, 1800

"Then from the iron tablet of my mind, / Will I efface my catalogue of wrongs."

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)