Date: 1790

"It is the province of the familiar, to diffuse chearfulness and ease--to open the heart of man to man, and to beam a temperate sunshine upon the mind."

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

Date: 1790

"Julia retired from the scene with regret. She was enchanted with the new world that was now exhibited to her, and she was not cool enough to distinguish the vivid glow of imagination from the colours of real bliss."

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

Date: 1790

"Meanwhile Hippolitus, who had passed the night in a state of sleepless anxiety, watched with busy impatience, an opportunity of more fully disclosing to Julia, the passion which glowed in his heart."

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

Date: 1790

"The airy schemes he once formed of future felicity, resulting from the union of two persons so justly dear to him--with the gay visions of past happiness--floated upon his fancy, and the lustre they reflected, served only to heighten by contrast, the obscurity and gloom of his present views."

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

Date: 1790

"When I knelt at the altar, the sacred flame of pure devotion glowed in my heart, and elevated my soul to sublimity."

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

Date: 1790

"Yet the banditti had steadily persisted in affirming that he was not concealed in their recesses; and this circumstance, which threw a deeper shade over the fears of Hippolitus, imparted a glimmering of hope to the mind of Julia."

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

Date: 1790

"But a new affliction was preparing for the marquis, which attacked him where he was most vulnerable; and the veil which had so long overshadowed his reason was now to be removed."

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

Date: 1790

"This information lighted up the wildest passions of his nature; his former sufferings faded away before the stronger influence of the present misfortune, and it seemed as if he had never tasted misery till now."

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

Date: 1790

"The gay powers of wit and fancy are like those brilliant phaenomena which sometimes glow in the sky, and dazzle the eye of the beholder by their luminous and uncommon appearances; while sweetness of temper has a resemblance to that gentle star, whose benign influence gilds alike the morning and...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"The idle crowd in fashion's train, / Their trifling comment, pert reply, / Who talk so much, yet talk in vain, / How pleas'd for thee, Oh nymph, I fly! / For thine is all the wealth of mind, / Thine the unborrow'd gems of thought, / The flash of light, by souls refin'd, / From heav'n's empyreal ...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)