Date: 1774

"The writer of Romance has even an advantage over those who endeavour to amuse by the play of fancy; who from the fortuitous collision of dissimilar ideas produce the scintillations of wit; or by the vivid glow of poetical imagery delight the imagination with colours of ideal radiance"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

Date: 1774

"From sense abstracted, some, with arduous flight, / Explore the realms of intellectual light."

— Scott, Mary [later Taylor] (1751/2-1793)

Date: 1788

"'Tis ever Nature's gen'rous view; / Great minds should noble ends pursue; / As the clear sun-beam, when most bright, / Warms, in proportion to its light."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Ye! who can selfish cares forego, / To pity those which others know; / As Light, that from its centre strays, / To glad all Nature with its rays; / Oh! ease the pangs ye stoop to share, / And rescue millions from despair!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"In no state of society can a practice, involving in it circumstances of such atrocious and enormous guilt, be considered as defensible by any person whose understanding is not darkened by the turpitude of his heart; in whom not only the feelings of the moral sense are extinguished, but, in this ...

— Belsham, William (1752-1827)

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)

Date: 1790

"His disturbed mind resembled a tempestuous flood, whose waves arise dark and turbulent, except where the sun-beam throws a line of trembling radiance across their agitated surface."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1790

"She lamented that Mr. Seymour's character, which appeared open, liberal, and elevated, should so ill bear a close inspection; and that his mind resembled one of those pictures which must be viewed by the dim light of a taper; since their coarse and glaring colours, which attract the eye in the d...

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1825

"Yet still to humble hope enough is given / Of light from reason's lamp, and light from heaven, / To teach us what to follow, what to shun, / To bow the head and say "Thy will be done!"

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)