Date: December 1790

"To argue from experience, it should seem as if the human mind, averse to thought, could only be opened by necessity; for, when it can take opinions on trust, it gladly lets the spirit lie quiet in its gross tenement."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"Go hence, thou slave of impulse, look into the private recesses of thy heart, and take not a mote from thy brother’s eye, till thou hast removed the beam from thine own."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1791, 1806

"When from the festive bow'r / The frenzied Homicide retreats, / And, in his bosom's cell, / Essays each rising throb to quell;"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1791, 1806

"Yet in my bosom's ruby cell / The philosophic lore shall live!"

— Robinson [Née Darby], Mary [Perdita] (1758-1800)

Date: 1792

"Taught from infancy that beauty is a woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"There are, it is true, trials when the good man must appeal to God from the injustice of man; and amidst the whining candour of hissings of envy, erect a pavilion in his own mind to retire to till the rumour be overpast."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The human mind is built of nobler materials than to be easily corrupted."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"False, indeed, must be the light when the drapery of situation hides the man, and makes him stalk in masquerade, dragging from one scene of dissipation to another the nerveless limbs that hang with stupid listlessness, and rolling round the vacant eye, which plainly tells us that there is no min...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, / Our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain."

— Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855)

Date: 1793

"Again, the only means by which truth, however immutable in its own nature, can be communicated to the human mind is through the inlet of the senses. It is perhaps impossible that a man shut up in a cabinet can ever be wise"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)