Date: 1793

The author can't understand an afterlife "where the mind, doomed to everlasting inactivity, shall be wholly a prey to the upbraidings of remorse and the sarcasms of devils, is so foreign to the system of things with which I am acquainted"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Purify your mind from the gross ideas of sense, and elevate it to the single contemplation of that abstract individual of which particular men are so many detached members, valuable only for the place they fill"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1793

"Exulting Reason from her bondage springs, / Claims Heav'n's wide range, and spreads her eagle wings; / While Superstition, lodg'd with bats and owls, / With Horror, and the hopeless maniac, howls."

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1793

"But wicked man! what does he, carnal wretch, / With all his horse-like passions on full stretch?"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1793

"Her mind was a kind of circulating library in little, and I sincerely wish romances were always attended with the same good effects they produced in her; for there is scarcely a good moral inculcated by them that she did not act up to."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)

Date: 1794

"This was soon chased away by Emily's smile, who smiled, however, with an aching heart, for she saw that his misfortunes preyed upon his mind, and upon his enfeebled frame."

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

Date: 1794

"She endeavoured to withdraw her thoughts from the anxiety, that preyed upon them, but they refused controul; she could neither read, or draw, and the tones of her lute were so utterly discordant with the present state of her feelings, that she could not endure them for a moment."

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

Date: 1794

"The slightest breath of dishonour would have stung him to the very soul"

— Godwin, William (1756-1836)

Date: 1795

"The passions are the wings of spirit. Cold tranquillity the grave of thought"

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1795

"Millions of chimeras floated on my imagination all were rejected in speedy succession ere they became old enough to take the colour of reason; yet fancy will be busy till we are no more."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)