Date: 1760-7

"A Man's body and his mind, with the utmost reverence to both I speak it, are exactly like a jerkin, and a jerkin's lining;--rumple the one--you rumple the other."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1761

"A veil of wisdom and honour makes so many folds about her heart, that it is impenetrable to human eyes, even to her own."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778); Kenrick, William (1729/30-1779)

Date: 1776

"I am provoked at this natural incapacity of conveying my sentiments to you; words are but a cloak, or rather a clog, to our ideas; there should be no curtain before the hearts of friends; and the longing I have ever felt for an intuitive converse, is to me a strong argument for a future state."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

"I retire to the family of my own thoughts, and find them in weeds of sorrow."

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1777

"[T]here is, methinks, a languor in your last letter--or is it but the livery of my own imagination, which the objects around me are constrained to wear?"

— Mackenzie, Henry (1745-1831)

Date: 1788

"To this her friend assented; and while she went to give some orders, and to fetch the crape veil in which she usually wrapped herself, (for even her dress partook something of the mournful cast of her mind) Emmeline, already equipped, went into the lawn, and saw plainly where the stranger had ma...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

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: 1796

"You! holding the next place to God in my breast, yet two days, and my heart will be unveiled to you."

— Lewis, Matthew Gregory (1775-1818)