Date: April 18, 1721

"Oh, what a Pain to think! when every Thought, / Perplexing Thought in Intricacies runs, / And Reason knits th'inextricable Toil / In which her self is taken. I am lost, / Poor Insect that I am, I am involv'd, / And bury'd in the Web my self have wrought."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"Thoughts disentangle, passing o'er the lip; / Clean runs the thread; if not, 'tis thrown away / Or kept to tie up nonsense for a song; / Song, fashionably fruitless; such as stains / The fancy, and unhallow'd passion fires; / Chiming her saints to Cytherea's fane."

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1742

"How, like a worm, was I wrapt round and round / In silken thought, which reptile Fancy spun, / Till darken'd Reason lay quite clouded o'er / With soft conceit of endless comfort here, / Nor yet put forth her wings to reach the skies!"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1744

"Or, spider-like, spin out our precious all, / Our more than vitals spin (if no regard / To great futurity) in curious webs / Of subtle thought, and exquisite design, / (Fine net-work of the brain!) to catch a fly, / The momentary buzz of vain renown, / A name, a mortal immortality?"

— Young, Edward (bap. 1683, d. 1765)

Date: 1799

"[W]hat knowledge they [women] have gotten stands out as it were above the very surface of their minds, like the appliquée of the embroiderer, instead of having been interwoven with the growth of the piece, so as to have become a part of the stuff. They did not, like men, acquire what they...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)